Blog
Weekly round-up of the national critics' restaurant reviews and news on eating out,
new places to eat, interviews & more, in London & the UK.

Whenever I was in the States, and began to compare (as we all do) home and away, I used to think that what London needed wasn't malls, multiplexes or Taco Bells, or the grating guff of I'm-Wanda-and-I'll-be-your-waitress, or Creosote portions or super-hormoned beef. What London needed like tonic needs gin were joints flogging fat juicy burritos, roaring with chilli, sludging with guac, spattered with rice, crunching with veg, and with sweet melting shreddy strands of slow, slow-cooked pork. I'd meet a friend for lunch in midtown, and we'd head to Chipotle and queue and I'd say: 'This would really work back home. Let's set one up. We'd be millionaires'. And he'd nod distractedly and stare into the middle distance and ask something à propos of nothing.

Well, I was right. What London - and Britain - evidently did need were burritos, and now we've got more than we know what to do with. Barely a week goes by without news of another opening (often in Fitzrovia, for whatever reason). Mexican food is hot right now, thanks in part to that slender, pulchritudinous winner of Masterchef, Thomasina Miers, who started Wahaca. These new Mexicans have names like Daddy Donkey, Chilango, Luradoras and the oddly affecting Benito's Hat.

There are two main reasons for this sudden burrito upswing. The first is obvious: we're getting used to the food. The modern burrito is an entirely American (specifically San Franciscan) invention, albeit with Spartan nineteenth-century origins in the wild borderlands between south-western USA and north-western Mexico. Until surprisingly recently, going to the US was largely once-in-a-lifetime for most British families: invariably the historic odyssey to meet Mickey Mouse in Florida. Relatively cheap air fares have now percolated almost everywhere, and the British, on the whole, have always been good at testing local nosh.

But more importantly, the burrito's spread is down to the burrito itself. It's an inherently soft and pappy thing; you can eat them with your dentures out; and on the whole - let's be honest - they're gentle and bland, sparked and enlivened with a slosh of chilli. They're thus strikingly well-suited to modern Britain, with our time-is-short, on-the-hoof, cutlery-spurning, three-minute-wolfing ways. Burritos work because they're quick, sweet and stodgy - and depend for their flavour largely on a thwack of Scovilles. They lend themselves to the quick scarf, the dribbled gnash - as I discovered when I entered a charity speed-eating competition - and that, my friends, is how we eat today.

The proliferation of the burrito across London and the UK says something illustrative and poignant about our changing eating habits. Chilango, a 'chain' with just three outlets, is recruiting investors for an anticipated rapid expansion. One of its sites is outside Goldman Sachs on Fleet Street, and the Masters of the Universe evidently love the product enough to pour their money into the brand. Mexican food languished under a pissed-up, underused umbrella for far too long: kerosene tequila, unidentified brown slurry and a stale curled taco. The best Mexican food, from the shimmering vibrance of the carnita to the redolent purr of the mole, is still depressingly rare. It remains to be seen whether the burrito - fat, thunking, fresh and bloated - will change this: but until then, the one thing we can say with confidence is that it's a bloody good hangover cure.