It's a wrap

Email|Print| Text size – + By Dennis Fisher

Globe Correspondent / February 21, 2008

When people talk about the food culture in Boston, the conversation is typically dominated by discussions of who makes the best chowder, where to get the freshest sushi, or which of the new upscale steakhouses is at the top of the heap. But there is an emerging subculture dedicated to the unique and varied delights of the burrito, that most egalitarian of foods, which provides your protein group, your tortilla group, and your salsa group, usually for less than six bucks.

"There's no way I can go to the grocery store and buy ingredients and make something as good as these burritos for that kind of money," says Jonah Feld, 27, a Cambridge resident and author of the Burrito Blog, the definitive resource for all things burrito in Boston.

Around the city, a slew of restaurants are vying for burrito-heads' attention. The oldest of the local chains is Boca Grande, a three-shop operation that originated in Cambridge in 1986. But Boca has had plenty of competition in recent years, especially from Anna's Taqueria, the five-store chain started in 1995 by the brother of Boca Grande's owner. (The two have been feuding ever since.) The other locally run chain, Boloco (formerly known as The Wrap), is the largest of the three, with 13 stores in New England, and has plenty of devotees of its own.

Knowing a fertile market when they see one, a couple of national chains have moved into the area as well. Qdoba Mexican Grill, which began in Denver in the mid-1990s, is now a massive national operation owned by Jack in the Box Inc. It has 14 locations in Massachusetts, including nine in Boston, Brookline, and Cambridge. Chipotle Mexican Grill, also based in Denver, has four stores here: Medford, Dedham, Somerville, and Brighton, as well as one opening in Harvard Square.

Any way you slice it, that's a lot of burritos. To help you navigate this crowded landscape, we convened a panel of serious burrito eaters for a blind taste test of offerings from each of these five chains. We ordered the same burrito from each restaurant: grilled steak with rice, pinto beans, cheese, and medium salsa, and tested them side by side in the Faneuil Hall food court. Our panelists, all veteran burrito-heads, were blogger Feld, a self-employed IT consultant; John Liu, 22, a Brookline resident and search marketing specialist; and Mike Prerau, 27, a neuroscientist who lives in Allston and also writes the popular Food Monkey blog. Away we go.

Anna's Taqueria

$4.60

Anna's is famous for its consistently good burritos made with fresh ingredients, and our sample did not disappoint. All three panelists were certain the first selection was from Anna's.

"You can tell because the ingredients are nicely mixed, it's got a nice, tight wrap, and it just tastes great," said Feld. Liu and Prerau both gave the burrito high marks for flavor and for the seasoned rice and nicely melted cheese. However, Prerau was not thrilled with the quality of the steak.

"The meat's a little dry for me," he said. "It might be left over from the lunch batch."

Liu was visibly happy while munching on the Anna's burrito. "I always appreciate Anna's," he said. "It's so consistent and never lets me down.

Qdoba Mexican Grill

$6.49

Things started poorly for Qdoba and went downhill from there. As soon as he bit into the burrito, Feld began shaking his head. "I've got a big chunk of unmelted cheese over here. Man, that's bad," he said. "We definitely look down on that."

Farther down the table, Prerau was having problems of his own. His burrito was so loosely wrapped that it fell apart in his hands. "This is really bad wrapping technique," he said. "But look how bad the meat distribution is, too. See how all of the rice is on one side and the meat is on the other? Ohh, that's bad. I follow the meat, so this isn't gonna work."

"The rice is good white rice though, and the meat has nice flavor to it," said Liu. "But there's definitely not enough meat." And with that, he pushed the burrito away.

Boloco

$5.95

"See, this is how you do it. This has good rice-to-meat distribution, and it has the best texture so far," said Prerau. The panelists were warming to their task, and the tight wrap on the Boloco offering spurred a five-minute conversation about the importance of getting the right burrito-maker at each restaurant.

"It totally depends on who's wrapping it," Feld said. "This is obviously someone who knows what they're doing."

Liu held up his burrito and looked at it from all angles: "I think it's too good to be Boloco, but I could be wrong."

The Boloco burrito, like Anna's, was on the thin side, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. "In terms of the filling, this is just right," said Prerau. "You would have to add 15 pounds of rice to make this as fat as Chipotle. I'd rather have it be thinner than have all of that packing foam."

Boca Grande

$3.75

By far the largest of the burritos sampled so far, the Boca Grande burrito was roughly the size of a peewee football. And from the looks on the panelists' faces, it apparently had roughly the same amount of taste.

"This is really gristly," Feld said, wincing.

"But it definitely has the largest chunks of meat so far," Prerau said, and then abruptly stopped chewing. "I say that as I've just bitten into a huge piece of fat and gristle."

Liu took a few bites before dropping his burrito unceremoniously on the tin foil wrapper. "It doesn't have any of the stuff that makes burritos good," he said. "It could be an aberration."

"And why are the beans pulverized?" Prerau asked. "It's like a slurry. Ugh."

Chipotle Mexican Grill

$6.45

A bit of burrito fatigue had set in by this point and Liu, Feld, and Prerau eyed the Chipotle burritos with a mix of suspicion and dread. Feld, a burrito purist, sliced his burrito open and sighed. "This looks like a pizza inside," he said. "The rice is the dough and the meat and salsa are the toppings. They shouldn't be separated like this. And look how loose it is. This guy wasn't even trying."

"At least you got some meat. There's no meat in mine at all," said Liu.

Prerau, the scientist, was still having trouble figuring out what the burrito-makers were doing to the beans. "Why are the beans smashed? It's like a mix of pintos and refried beans," he said.

Feld, saddened by the weak effort from Chipotle, gave up and went back to the Anna's burrito: "I need something to wash that away."

The verdict

The tasters, all Anna's devotees, stunned themselves by picking Boloco as the two-to-one favorite. Liu - who identified all five burritos correctly - and Prerau cited Boloco's expert construction, good meat-to-rice ratio, and overall flavor. Feld went with Anna's, but only halfheartedly. "It wasn't their best effort," he said, "but it's important that the restaurant is greater than the sum of its meals."