confession: Chipotle

A few years ago, I walked into a spanking new Chipotle's and tried a carnitas (pork) burrito that was so salty, I took a few bites and never went back. That is, until two weeks ago. A friend of mine mentioned that her sister liked the chain. Now, her sister is a marathon-running, edamame-loving skinny girl who doesn't own a TV set on principle, so this took me by surprise. Perhaps the oversalted pork was a relic of the past.

I figured I'd try it again sometime, but chocked it up to a hypothetical in the far future. But lo and behold, two days after that conversation, there it was, beckoning to me across Broadway on 110th Street, just as I'd been scanning the landscape for something to eat and just as the principles of The Secret decreed. If you envision it, it will come. For some people, it's a parking space; for me, it's an oversized burrito.

There was a buzz to the place. It was prime lunch time, and people there looked like content squirrels, holding onto their rather large portions blanketed in foil. I wanted to join them. The line moved quickly, the lady in front of me ordered a barbacoa burrito--the braised beef--and all thoughts of a grilled chicken bowl, sans flour tortilla, left my head as I found myself parroting back after her. I knew it wasn't necessarily what a skinny person would order, but I wanted to experience Chipotle in all its injudicious glory.

I sat down with my burrito loaded with rice, black beans, the shredded braised beef, hot salsa, and sour cream. The tortilla was warm and the rice buttery and speckled with cilantro. It was tasty. But salty once the beef and maybe the beans entered the equation. Not so salty that I wasn't able to finish the whole thing this time, but enough that I wondered why no one else seemed to be frowning in bewilderment at the amount of salt in their food. The next day my face felt swollen and tight at the same time from all the sodium.

Chipotle doesn't publish nutritional information on their site, maybe because while they tout the integrity of their ingredients, it doesn't mean that calorie, fat, and sodium counts aren't sky high. According to this calculation, the burrito I had contained over 1,100 calories, 44 grams of fat, and a whopping 3,551 mg of sodium. It's recommended that an adult not exceed 2,400 mg of sodium daily. Even if you skip the beef, that only brings it down to about 800 calories--1,000 if you add the guacamole which is included as an option for a vegetarian burrito and which contains nearly the same amount of fat and sodium.

Perversely all this research only made me want to try another burrito. While it had been way too salty for my taste, I had enjoyed the mouthfeel of all the different ingredients. Even the rice tasted velvety. Basically, Chipotle is designed to make you crave their particular brand of fat and salt, and there are plenty of testimonies from people who claim they are addicted. But I also wanted to create my own concoction that would play down the salt factor. Perhaps I could even get away with ordering the barbacoa if they heaped a ton of guacamole on it? Sure, my face would still balloon up but I wouldn't taste the salt as much. Or a veggie with just the rice and beans and ALL the salsas? I think this is how these "do it your way" places get you hooked. Eventually, if you go enough, you'll tweak until something is to your liking. I never appreciated Subway until I had the Italian BMT with 35 pickles. 

Thankfully, any branch of Chipotle is out of my way for now, so maybe I'll forget about it. It seems a shame to be addicted to some giant burrito that's been slapped with salt when one can get a nicely chargrilled carne al pastor taco with fresh cilantro, lime, and radish with a made-on-the-premises salsa at any one of a number of places in East Harlem, one being Taco Mix. These tacos are whisper light as they hit the plate and they won't show up on your face the next day.

Comments

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OMG! I was just talking to a co-worker about how Chipotle has something in it that makes us addicted. Why else would we shove 1300 calories and 3500+ mg's of sodium? It's insane. I just gave up smoking and if I don't stop the Chipotle nonsense then I'm going to end up 1300 pounds!

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