Fried Brain Sandwich

Chipotle Mexican Grill opened its Clayton outlet on the corner of Forsyth and Central last week. On Wednesday it ran a free Burrito promotion and lines snaked out the door all day. On Thursday, the crowds were manageable and I got in for a taste.

Let me say up front (and often) that I think it's a great chain--probably one of the best in the country. But I have issues. The experience is very much food as assembly line--think Subway on steroids. Prior to hitting the line, you are prepped with a manifesto cheerfully concealed as menu, "First time to Chipotle? Here's how it works." Everything is designed to minimize the "dawdle" factor. Not a bad thing, unless of course you are one who likes to mull over options. Henry Ford realized early on that options slow down the assembly line -- thus his famous quip, "any color as long as it's black." You have some choices at Chipotle, but not many. Soft corn tortillas - sorry. A couple of sprigs of cilantro - it's in the rice. A squeeze of lime, some diced pineapple, grated radish - nope, nada, not today. There are in fact four choices of salsa. The hottest -- a Tomatillo-Red Chili number with a smoky complex tang -- doesn't hit the red line on the Scoville scale. The problem is that they are only available to the workers on other side of the line. No salsa bar. If you ask, they will cheerfully give you a side of salsa. But you have to ask and that adds to the dawdle factor.

There's only one product at Chipotle -- the burrito. Everything else is a variation on that theme. Burrito without the tortilla--that's a Burrito Bol. Burrito not wrapped--that's the Tacos (also without the rice and beans). This is fine. Know what you do and do it well. The burrito itself is several Degrees of Separation from its Tex-Mex kin. The proximate inspiration is the Mission Burrito, a weighty slug of rice, beans, meat, and condiments wrapped tightly in a steam saturated flour tortilla that became a defining food of the San Fransisco's Mission District in the 80's and 90's.

My issue with Chipotle really isn't Chipotle. They do all kinds of right things. Their meat comes from animals raised with room to roam and without antibiotics or grow factor supplements. The food is fresh, without trans fats or added sugars. The are arguably an example of Slow Food fast food. Packaging is minimal using unbleached paper. The design is a kind of cheerful industrial chic, using recycled content in the unadorned galvanised and stainless steel.

My issue is the Chipotlians -- the fans who rave about the "great Mexican food". I heard this phrase bobbing out of the buzz at several places in Clayton last week. Lookit, A, it is not Mexican food. B, it is great only in the context of fast food. In a broader context it rates, maybe, "pretty good". This is not a curmungendly rant on the semantics of Mexican food (well it is, but there's more). The deeper point is about what chains (even very good chains) do to food. Diversity is a really good thing in food. Choice is a really good thing. I fume about not having more choices for garnishes on my tacos (I prefer the tacos to the burrito -- I can skip the rice and they will do an assortment of meats). If I really didn't want to put up with it, I could go somewhere else -- if there is somewhere else to go. Biological diversity is destroyed when agribuisness focuses on a dozen profitable crops and herbicides everything else into submission. Main street diversity is destroyed when Big Box Mart opens a superstore out by the highway. Food chains (even very good ones) destroy diversity by codifying and promoting a single vision of what a product should be. The scores of SF taquerias created choices -- choirizo, lenqua (beef tongue), sesos (brain) or Briria (goat) -- not necessarily ones that everyone wants. But that's part of the energy, the excitement of food; being able to go down the block and see how the other guy does it -- the antithesis of the stultifying sameness of most chains.

If the Chipotlians are stepping up from Taco Bell or JIB -- great. Forsyth and Central is the hot corner of Clayton. Krispy Kream couldn't make it and before that there was a Taco Bell. Chipotle has pushed them aside. What a very different world it would be if Chipotle was the bottom rung on the food ladder. But it is up to Chipotlians to get us there. Go have your Carnitas burrito this week. But go down the street to ZuZu's the next day. And check out Chuy's and Arceila's next week. And after that Primo Taqueria, El Burrio Loco, or Taqueria El Torito. Then come back and we can talk about "Best Mexican."

It's been about two months since I started this blog and I thought I should take a moment to see what I've done and to perhaps say something about what I'm trying to do.

According to my blogging software I've posted eighteen articles (this one will be the nineteenth). Most have been substantial; either recipes, commentaries, or reviews. A minority have been shorter pieces; food news or plugs for upcoming events. This is about right. It is not one of my goals to be a food news relay. Ian Froeb's blog Gut Check at the Riverfront Times is doing a good job of that (along with many other things).

I am surprised that I have only done three recipes so far. I started off thinking that it would be the main focus. The twin punches of summer heat and vacation have kept me out of the kitchen, so I think the balance will shift. The flip side is that I have done more review articles. St. Louis already has a number of review alternatives. Ian puts out one a week at the RFT as does Joe Bonwich in the Post Dispatch. Joe and Ann Pollack do a sort of dinning journal on their blog. And Sauce Magazine has any number of features promoting restaurants. I don't feel compelled to offer a regular review. But when I get excited about places I visit (new or old) I will share it.

A couple of friends have asked why I have written so much about Hispanic food in the first two months. That's easy. I got excited. I found El Scorcho, for example, to be innovative, imaginative, and fun. The place has a clear conception of what it wants to be and executes that conception well. The fact that it also happens to be a hole-in-the-wall taqueria shouldn't get in the way of it being a really good restaurant. The vision thing (as Bush the Elder use to say) in particular is something that I think is under-represented in restaurant evaluation. The best restaurants without exception embody a clear and compelling vision that can be seen in details at every level. And of course the very best restaurants execute those details to perfection. On the other hand, I have the most disconcerting experiences were the vision is confused, faded, farmed out, or simply missing. I have eaten in more places that I care to think about where the simple act of pairing an appetizer with an entree is best done by throwing two darts at the menu.

So a clear vision of what you are combined with good execution gets me excited about a restaurant. A great example is my piece on Archibald's Bar B. Q. in Tuscaloosa. But of course not all visions are the same, so there are bonus points to be awarded for the quality of the vision -- the equivalent in diving to the degree-of-difficulty multiplier.

Going forward, I have a number of pieces in different stages of completeness -- an article on why you think more broadly about food brands, some thoughts about the movie Ratatouille, and some troubling news about food in New Orleans. I have a recipe I'm working on for an Oyster and Jerusalem Artichoke Bisque. There are plenty of notes on the "fancy" places we ate at in Columbia and Birmingham. And I also want to write about the Australian Wine meal I had at the Ritz.

Finally, some background about me. When I wrote to Alanna Kellogg asking her to include me on her blog A Veggie Venture, she wrote back a sweet note asking, "Um, who are you?" I am from New Orleans. I came to St. Louis in 1992 to attend graduate school at Washington University and have lived here since. I started in the restaurant business out of high school at the elegant Pontchartrain Hotel. I moved on to a restaurant in the French Quarter called Cafe Sbisa and became the head chef there when I was 21. My mother and I opened a restaurant together in uptown New Orleans called The Upperline. It will celebrate its 25th anniversary in January 2008. I left the restaurant business to return to school and because I think it is for the young of knee and back.