When speaking about food, its hard for even Palo Alto Joe to be cynical. For lunch I like to "grab a burrito." However I mean this only in the sense that a Southerner wants a Coca-cola when he says "I want a Coke." Sometimes a coke is a Coke and sometimes its a Seven-up. Its the same with burritos, although the lines are being blurred.
"Grabbing a burrito" has become the generic term for lunch and Palo Alto is embracing this by offering the widest possible variety of burrito-like food in the civilized world. In the olden days, you grabbed a sandwich and it was anything from a hamburger to a slice of wonder with PBJ. Today's Palo Altan grabs a burrito and the choice is just as wide.
The most obvious purveyor of burrito like substances is World
Craps. The inventor of a whole new genre of food, World Craps has seen
their idea of wrapping up Chinese leftovers inside a tortilla shell
copied by several other restaurants including Chevy's. While
innovative, Palo Alto Joe remains unimpressed.
On the more bueno end of the burrito spectrum are such notables as Pollo's, now renamed the Chicken King and even more recently merged with Una Mas!, whose Lucky 7 Burrito card is more valuable than any yuppie's gold card. Andale makes an excellent burrito and offers incredible margaritas to top it off which keeps Palo Alto Joe away from work for hours. Radical burrito-heads will make the trek to Senor Taco and can experience carrots in their burrito. Yuppie-sheep hoping to catch onto the craze can get a burrito with fancy designs drawn in green sauce if they make like Bugs Bunny and Take a Left at Albuquerque.
At the other end of the burrito world is Lettuce Cup Chicken at Mandarin Gourmet and Moo Shoo anything at a half dozen other Chinese places. It was another of Palo Alto Joe's great scientific achievements which proved that the Chinese invented all food (except for Guiness) and for the last three thousand years the rest of the world has just been fiddling around the edges. It is interesting to note that moo-sho at Jing Jing actually comes on a flour tortilla instead of a rice pancake. Conicidence or Conspiracy? What remains unknown is how the word moo-sho was transliterated to sound like burrito by Marco Polo and his traveling companion Sancho Panza.
Fortunately I have yet to see a pizza served on a tortilla and the great Thai restaurants in town have not yet succumbed to the burrito craze, so one can escape a burrito when necessary. Fortunately it is not often necessary. So go on. The next time you want to eat penne-pasta with garlic, potatos and shiitake mushrooms, Palo Alto Joe encourages you to grab a penne burrito at Senor Giovanni-san's.