Enough of shove gate

No

MiZery;842084646 said:

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Enough of shove gate

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Don't know if it's still there, but Picante's near Gillman and 4th I belive, down near the water was hands down my favorite.

I ended up logging lots of time down at the marina and it was a staple.

I gave up looking for a good spot because I could never find anything worthwhile. Luckily now there's a chipotle.

:rollinglaugh::rollinglaugh:

Isn't there a Gordo's on Telegraph?
cancun on Center?

Always found Gordos a little bland.

Haven't been to Cactus or Cancun in awhile, been meaning to try La Mission on University after reading some reviews.

So El farolito in the Mission was just rated the best Burrito in the country by Esquire. I call BS on that. http://www.esquire.com/blogs/food-for-men/el-farolito-best-burrito-winner-15120286

El Farolito is the third best burrito in the Mission. Go to Pancho Villa's.

In Berkeley, Taqueria Familia is pretty good at Shattuck & Ashby. Cancun is OK, Picante is OK, Cactus is OK, and their fish tacos are quite good. There used to be a place on San Pablo Ave called Pepitos. Was good but I'm not sure if it is still there.

:p

socaliganbear;842084663 said:

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So El farolito in the Mission was just rated the best Burrito in the country by Esquire. I call BS on that. http://www.esquire.com/blogs/food-for-men/el-farolito-best-burrito-winner-15120286

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They can take their poll of friends and go eat Americanized faux Mexican food. I can think of 10 places in SoCal with better "hombre" burritos. And you don't even want to add Texas to the mix. San Francisco and New York burritos best in the nation? Only in their minds.

drizzlybears brother;842084654 said:

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Don't know if it's still there, but Picante's near Gillman and 4th I belive, down near the water was hands down my favorite.

I ended up logging lots of time down at the marina and it was a staple.

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but with all the great eats in Berkeley, why bother.

wifeisafurd;842084675 said:

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They can take their poll of friends and go eat Americanized faux Mexican food. I can think of 10 places in SoCal with better "hombre" burritos. And you don't even want to add Texas to the mix. San Francisco and New York burritos best in the nation? Only in their minds.

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The burrito itself has possibly the most questionable Mexican origins so they are all "Americanized faux Mexican food" to a degree. The burritos most people are familiar with were created in California.

wifeisafurd;842084675 said:

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They can take their poll of friends and go eat Americanized faux Mexican food. I can think of 10 places in SoCal with better "hombre" burritos. And you don't even want to add Texas to the mix. San Francisco and New York burritos best in the nation? Only in their minds.

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Agreed. NY/SF have some top notch food, none of which include burritos. For all the love the Mission gets, socal and TX are indeed way ahead.

Seriously. SF/NY has great food but there's a real snobbery from SF/NY about their food. Nothing I've had in the Mission or in NY touches Mexican food in LA. There's lots of other things as well...

There is actually better mexican food in East Oakland than anywhere in SF.

StillNoStanfurdium;842084682 said:

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The burrito itself has possibly the most questionable Mexican origins so they are all "Americanized faux Mexican food" to a degree. The burritos most people are familiar with were created in California.

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BTW, I think Bay Area food is right there with Chicago and New York. Great restaurants. Just not when it comes to Mexican food.

Please, Bay Area food is the best in the country, and probably the world. You won't get quality $10 plates anywhere else like you do in SF. Plus the high end food is very competitive with the rest of the world... It is what makes Bay Area food great. You can get a great $200 meal anywhere, but only here is every place you walk into for $15 great. I loved Chicago food, but they don't compare quality wise with what you get here, and I've lived in Florida, Maine, Indiana, Chicago, Berkeley, Newport Beach, and SF

I thought this place was great. They use locally grown produce and the burrito I had was fantastic. Terrific salsa bar. I liked it much better than Chipotle. Pretty decent sangria too. Went after the Furd game -- the dining experience was 100X better than that bore-fest of a game. Check out my review:

http://www.yelp.com/biz/cancun-taqueria-berkeley#hrid:JK6LYr0KjrXnWgluqfb03Q

KoreAmBear;842084721 said:

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I thought this place was great. They use locally grown produce and the burrito I had was fantastic. Terrific salsa bar. I liked it much better than Chipotle. Pretty decent sangria too. Went after the Furd game -- the dining experience was 100X better than that bore-fest of a game. Check out my review:

http://www.yelp.com/biz/cancun-taqueria-berkeley#hrid:JK6LYr0KjrXnWgluqfb03Q

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If my memory serves me right Rece Davis and the College Gameday crew ate there and wrote about it on their blog. Though I can't find it.

I've always been a gordos man, but I did like cancun's salsa bar

LA is the most overrated Mexican food of all time. All of my family are from LA, I've probably been to about 50 different LA Taqueria's and I'm still waiting to find a burrito that can compare to Papalotes in SF.

San Diego has some amazing spots but SF doesn't get their reputation of fine food for nothing.

Also, the Montclair Taqueria is very solid IMO. I never thought I'd be a ground beef guy but their marinated ground beef is superb.

socaliganbear;842084695 said:

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There is actually better mexican food in East Oakland than anywhere in SF.

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Bless your soul sir. The Guadalajara taco truck shits on everything in SF that I have had. Alameda has great mex as well hit up La Penca Azul or Ramiro and sonssons. I'm a sucker for king taco in LA though.

The burrito is really a very simply constructed dish. IMO, there are generally two types - good or bad. It depends on the quality and freshness of the ingredients. I've had both good and bad burritos in NY, SF, LA, TX and Chicago. Here in NYC, we have Dos Toros (Cal alums) to thank for a decent burrito as well as some very good trucks.

Holmoephobic;842084738 said:

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LA is the most overrated Mexican food of all time. All of my family are from LA, I've probably been to about 50 different LA Taqueria's and I'm still waiting to find a burrito that can compare to Papalotes in SF.

San Diego has some amazing spots but SF doesn't get their reputation of fine food for nothing.

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Both dubious points are hilarious, sir.

Haven't had a great burrito in Berkeley, ever. I love El Farolito, but it's def not world beating, nor is Papalote.

I'm from LA, I've had my share of great burritos (many of which come from trucks, pre-food truck craze), but the best I've had have been in San Diego. Very tough to beat a California burrito from there.

I've come to recognize that people are always biased in their taste of Mexican food towards where they grew up having it. It's just how it is, and is merely based in how/where you developed your palate.

StillNoStanfurdium;842084682 said:

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The burrito itself has possibly the most questionable Mexican origins so they are all "Americanized faux Mexican food" to a degree. The burritos most people are familiar with were created in California.

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Just like the celebration of Cinco De Mayo is a Northern California invention dating back to the Civil War/Gold Rush LINK
The burrito is also a Northern California invention.

Northern California, Monterrey to San Francisco up to Santa Rosa was where the population was when what is the western U.S. was part of Mexico. While the rest of Mexico and the southwest, including Texas, has summer rain, perfect for growing corn, the Bay Area has winter rain and dry summers, perfect for growing wheat. The Spanish made the Bay Area the wheat basket for all of New Spain, exporting back to the rest of Mexico, even exporting wheat back to Spain. Corn is relatively difficult to grow here as, since we have no summer rain, it requires irrigation. So here, wheat was cheap and plentiful, corn scarce, whereas in the rest of Mexico, flour was scarce and expensive and used mostly for bread and pastries. No one in Mexico back then would think to make tortillas out of precious flour when they were surrounded by corn.

Thus, back in the 1700s and 1800s, when visiting the missions and ranchos in the area, everyone noted that, unlike the rest of Mexico where small corn tortillas and the taco ruled, here they used very large wheat flour tortillas that they would wrap up their stews with, especially when feeding the workers (no plates or utensils needed). Interestingly, it was also noted by early Spanish visitors that the favorite meal of the indios was a stew of young donkey ("burrito") and beans, which was, like everything else, eaten wrapped in a large flour tortilla. This may have extended to the Mexican mining camps after the gold rush where burros where the main pack animal. It was also during the Gold Rush that Sacramento, the last stop before heading to the gold fields, became a major rice producing region. Rice may have entered the burrito then.

However, going back to the early days of Northern California as part of New Spain and Mexico, after wheat grown around the Bay, the major product of the ranchos in surrounding drier areas was cattle. The major export was hides and tallow. That left a lot of beef left over. The best cuts were eaten by the wealthy, some could be dried, but much of the rest would be thrown away or, almost certainly, grilled or stewed and used to replace the burrito in the "burrito" eaten by the masses.

The "burrito" evolved as California's agricultural sector grew. As they had been fed since mission days, latino farm workers were fed from a communal pot, ladled into large flour tortillas, usually incorporating whatever meat and produce was available on that particular farm.

It may be that the burrito was exported to Mexico (specifically Chihuahua--where "common knowledge" has it that the burrito was invented in the 1920s) from California by the many California latinos who joined the Mexican Revolution. Did you know that Francisco Madera, the father of the Mexican Revolution was a Cal Bear?!!! [URL="http://www.pbs.org/itvs/storm-that-swept-mexico/wp-content/faces/madero-01.php?lightbox[width]=940&lightbox[height]=400"]LINK[/URL]

Quote:

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One young man opposed to the Daz regime was Don Francisco I. Madero – a man 5'3", with a high-pitched voice and from a family with great wealth. He was from of Coahuila – a state bordering Texas. He had attended the University of California at Berkeley, where he had studied agriculture, and he had finished his education in France in 1895. From the age of twenty-one to the age of thirty-two Madero had been running his own cotton plantation, using advanced agricultural methods and helping to create a successful cotton industry in Coahuila.

Madero had sympathy for common people. He raised the wages of his workers above that which others paid. He gave them hygienic living quarters and saw to it that they received free medical attention. In his home he sheltered dozens of children, and he was paying for the education of a number of orphans. And being a man with heart, Madero criticized the Daz government for its laxity in building schools, for not providing better water distribution and other amenities to common people and for bloody repression against dissent. He joined the Benito Juarez Democratic Club in a nearby town: San Pedro. He wrote political pamphlets, and he wrote a book titled The Presidential Succession in 1910, a book about the Daz' re-election.

Madero's book attracted a lot of attention. When he visited clubs around Mexico that favored honest elections, large crowds gathered to get a glimpse of the little man who had the courage to raise his voice. One month before the election, President Daz had had enough of Madero, and in June, 1910, just before the elections were to be held, he had Madero and many of his allies jailed on charges of inciting people to riot.

Daz won his election with a ridiculously large number of votes, and with the elections over and Madero apparently no longer a threat to his power, Daz had him released from prison under bail and on condition that he remain in the same town as his prison: San Luis Potos, in central Mexico. In October, Madero sneaked out of town and made his way to Texas where, later that month, he published a new book. In his previous book, Madero had described violence as counter-productive. In his latest book he expressed the need for a counter force against the Daz regime other than massive pleadings. Pleading he could see was not enough. He called for an armed – in other words, violent – revolution.

Madero was in a hurry. He laid plans for his rising to take place on November 22, less than a month after his new book had been published. From his Texas headquarters, he strategized with allies in Mexico. He intended to cross the border and put himself at the head of an army that would march to the capital, Mexico City – while his new book was creating a stir in Mexico and the press in Mexico and the United States were buzzing with excitement.

When the assigned day of uprising arrived, Madero crossed the border as planned, got lost, then finally found the men promised him. But rather than the initial 800 men that he had been promised, there were only a few, half of whom were unarmed. Madero returned to Texas emotionally devastated. He was now without money, and he considered giving up politics.

The notion that an uprising was taking place remained alive among many in Mexico, and it was still alive in the newspapers in Mexico – and the United States. The expectations turned into a reality as armed rebellions occurred independent of Madero. In the state of Chihuahua (just west of Coahuila), a band of men led by a former sharecropper, bandit, bank and train robber, mine laborer and shopkeeper, Francisco (Pancho) Villa, attacked and defeated a contingent of Daz' federal troops. And in Chihuahua another former miner, Pascual Orozco, took power in the town of Guerrero, and he became a local hero like Villa. An armed uprising was also underway in the state of Morelos – a state in the tropics, with a lot of sugar cane, located southeast east of Mexico City. The leader of this rebellion was a bright but illiterate young Indian named Emiliano Zapata. He had been outraged at the arrogance of the rich hacendados of his area who for decades had been stealing land belonging to Indian villages and getting away with it....

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Holmoephobic;842084738 said:

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LA is the most overrated Mexican food of all time. All of my family are from LA, I've probably been to about 50 different LA Taqueria's and I'm still waiting to find a burrito that can compare to Papalotes in SF.

San Diego has some amazing spots but SF doesn't get their reputation of fine food for nothing.

Also, the Montclair Taqueria is very solid IMO. I never thought I'd be a ground beef guy but their marinated ground beef is superb.

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Oy. You were so close. Papalotes????? The salsa is fantastic, that is true. But the burrito is extremely mediocre. Merely a means to transfer the salsa to your mouth.

Go to El Castillito. Al Pastor all meat burrito. Best burrito I've ever had.

Incredible! Calumnus, you have provided a wealth of fantastic knowledge of the history of Mexican Americans lately. Thank you. I had not previously ever heard of Madero. Fascinating.

Really cool note on Madero, didn't know that.

But the Bay Area being the originator of the burrito is disputable. Other accounts place the origins in the fields of the Central Valley, and others even in Guanajuato (which I find hard to believe.) Anyway, we may never really know its exact pinpoint, other than it evolved in different ways in 3 parts of the state.

Also, I may have missed it in the article, but I don't think it actually pointed to the region in California where Americanized celebration of Cinco de Mayo started.

The best burrito? There's this place called La Burrita... *ducks*. I actually think they make a decent burrito but the awesome thin about la Burrita is their salsa. I love their Salsa.

Back in the day, Mario's had a good burrito. I haven't had it since they relocated / changed ownership. They had hoo salsa too.

Cancun is very meh to me. They had fancy salsas but fancy doesn't equal good IMO.

If you want a good burrito, get the a la Jesus quesadillas from Juan's in west Berkeley . I don't even remember what their burritos taste like because I always have to get these quesadillas when I'm there.

Pancho Villa's in SF is every bit as good as King's in LA.

San Diego might have better burrito spots.

Texas is good, but New Mexican food is the best by far. Berkeley is a 1, San Francisco is a 3, LA and East Oakland are a 4, San Diego is a 5, Texas is a 6, and New Mexico is an 10. The difference is that pronounced.

This: http://www.elparagua.com/MenuMain.html

This: http://www.littleburro.com/taquerias/newmexico.html

This: http://www.sfshed.com/Menu.html

MiZery;842084646 said:

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Enough of shove gate

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Bravo! Your oldie but goodie ploy worked to perfection.

I enjoyed a burrito at Picoso (in the Epicurious Garden) a couple years ago, but it's the kind of place I always forget about because it's a little far from campus and tucked inside. I've been wanting to go back and try it again. No idea if it's still good or not, but at the time, I did think it was probably the best I've had in Berkeley.

grandmastapoop;842084784 said:

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Oy. You were so close. Papalotes????? The salsa is fantastic, that is true. But the burrito is extremely mediocre. Merely a means to transfer the salsa to your mouth.

Go to El Castillito. Al Pastor all meat burrito. Best burrito I've ever had.

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I go to El Castillito all the time for work. The two guys behind the counter are incredibly fast at making burritos. I'm not a big Al Pastor fan but their Pollo Verde is very good and I love the little bit of crunch their burrito has due to grilling the tortilla. However, what is the deal with their chips!?!? Awful. And no salsa bar? Sorry, as you can tell, I am a salsa man.

As for Papalote, they only beat Bobby Flay in a throwdown so there's that. The Surf N Turf burrito is amazing IMO.

Holmoephobic;842084738 said:

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LA is the most overrated Mexican food of all time. All of my family are from LA, I've probably been to about 50 different LA Taqueria's and I'm still waiting to find a burrito that can compare to Papalotes in SF.

San Diego has some amazing spots but SF doesn't get their reputation of fine food for nothing.

Also, the Montclair Taqueria is very solid IMO. I never thought I'd be a ground beef guy but their marinated ground beef is superb.

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Speaking of which, I grew up near this place called Cactus Taqueria on Vine Street in Hollywood.

I'd always see big lines, but never went. But I kept hearing and seeing tweets from people who work at nearby Paramount Studios that it was the best...

So I finally tried it last August...and was very disappointed.

okaydo;842084820 said:

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Speaking of which, I grew up near this place called Cactus Taqueria on Vine Street in Hollywood.

I'd always see big lines, but never went. But I kept hearing and seeing tweets from people who work at nearby Paramount Studios that it was the best...

So I finally tried it last August...and was very disappointed.

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I had this EXACT same experience with my family!! We waited in this god awful line for about 90 minutes only to be served some of the most boring Mexican food I had ever eaten. I couldn't believe it.