How is it that Nobody Has Called BS on Chipotle’s Quesarito?

We interrupt your regularly schedule Midtown Lunch programming to bring you a quick rant on a current off the menu item at Chipotle sweeping the blogosphere this month

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Please do not take photos of the crime we are about to commit…

My relationship with Chipotle has been a well documented lunchtime roller coaster ride.  They were one of the very first places I wrote about when I started Midtown Lunch almost 7 years ago, and my disbelief over how much people in Midtown loved them led to the creation of my Ultimate Burrito Theory (and how it related to Chipotle sucking.)   A year later we uncovered the absurd voodoo economics behind Chipotle’s listed calorie counts, and that was it.  Chipotle was dead to me.

Fast forward to last year, when my love of Jamie Oliver and hatred of fast and cheap McFrankenfoods caused to me to reassess my  intense dislike of Chipotle.  While I still don’t love the food, I now really appreciate what they are doing in the fast food world. And  acknowledge that if more fast food chains took their lead, the world would be a much better place.  And it was under the banner of this truce that I heard about… THE QUESARITO.  An off the menu Chipotle burrito wrapped in a quesdilla!?!

How could I not?

Yesterday I headed over to my neighborhood Chipotle in Downtown Culver City, with visions of this massive quesarito. Like any normal red blooded American person I was picturing a regular Chipotle burrito, but instead of one tortilla it would be wrapped with two.  And between those two tortillas… melted cheese. A burrito wrapped in a quesadilla. I wondered if they would even know what I was talking about.  This is Los Angeles after all, where ordering no tortilla is the default order.  I can’t imagine that too many paleo-obsessed burrito bowl lovers are asking for the Mexican version of the Dominoes stuffed crust pizza.

So imagine my surprise when the guy behind the counter immediately knew what I was talking about, and quickly set off to make my quesarito.  Of course that surprise was immediately overshadowed by the shock of what came next.

The burritoista (?) proceeded to top a single tortilla with cheese, steam it in the tortilla to melt said cheese, and then open up this single tortilla and stuff it like a normal burrito.  A normal burrito, that has melted cheese in it… or as I like to call it, a properly made burrito.  Seriously Chipotle.  This is your off the menu quesarito?!?  Steaming the cheese in the tortilla before adding the other burrito fillings? I don’t care how Chipotle defines a quesadilla, but this simple act of melting cheese is not worthy of the awesomeness of a term like “quesarito”.  Do they do it differently in other cities?  Some photos I’ve seen online look like they could have a double tortilla, cheese stuffed outer layer.  Is this just some L.A. bullshit? The guy seemed to know exactly what I was asking for.

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In fairness, Chipotle doesn’t charge extra money for this, and getting melted cheese is an improvement to their normal process of cold cheesing the burrito just before wrapping it.  But you’re going to have to do a little more than melt some cheese to get me excited.

Call me when your quesarito is a double tortilla wrapped burrito with melted cheese in between those two layers, aka a burrito wrapped in a quesadilla.  Until then, you’re dead to me… again.

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