Vegan burritos

Restaurante Tierra Caliente (Cypress Park). $8.50 “burrito de vegetales.” Not good. Lettuce doesn’t belong in a burrito IMO. This tastes half like a decent burrito and half like a bad salad. The menu says it contains avocado, but I don’t see any.


Jewel. Silver Lake ish. Mostly vegan but they do serve eggs.

Breakfast burrito with tempeh and avocado.

Peony: it’s tasty. I like it. It has the right balance of texture and flavor. Doesn’t taste Mexican though.

Warrior: I think the burrito is good quality and created with care. But I find the flavors too light and boring. I’d put this in the bottom half of vegan burritos thus far, which speaks to the strength of LA’s vegan burrito scene.

Added bonus: “carrot lox” toast.

Peony: Light and refreshing. Reminded me of Redbird-style New American breakfast.

Warrior: I like the carrot lox toast a lot. This is worth seeking out. It may be the best dish at Jewel.

Special added bonus: homemade soy milk from Peony.

Warrior: Divine!

Peony: We saved up for a while and final updated our 7+ year old soy milk machine to the top of the line of Joyoung soy milk machines. We are just so happy with the new model! We stopped making soy milk for quite some time because filtering soy milk and washing the machine were so time consuming. Now the new model has updated its grinding power (up to 35,000 rpm) to break down the beans very very finely (on the product website they claim it’s powerful enough to break the cell wall - which is a good thing to help release all the good stuff inside the plant cells). So filtering is not necessary plus the taste and aroma are better preserved without filtering. The new auto wash function is also a dream, too!

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Organico (Hollywood). A make your own burrito situation. I made two burritos. I don’t understand why the chef is calling upon me to design the burritos. Seems like the chef’s job.

Peony: Decent burritos. Better than the average I have had. Good quality.

Warrior: These burritos are solid, nothing special. In the bottom half of vegan burritos.


Doomie’s NextMex. $11 vegan chicken burrito.

Warrior: I was excited by this restaurant’s menu, which reminds me of Cena Vegan’s menu. But this restaurant, unfortunately, is nowhere near the quality of Cena Vegan. The burrito is in the lower half of vegan burritos, and the restaurant’s food overall uses too much salt as a poor substitute for genuine flavor. It’s just not good quality.

Peony: Pretty good.

Tlayuda LA. Vegan chipotle burrito. Marinated hibiscus! Along with avocado and rice.

Peony: interesting flavor. Good texture too.

Warrior: This burrito is good quality — well-constructed, good flavors. The tart hibiscus works well with the rice as a foil. This burrito belongs in the upper half of vegan burritos.


Cena vegan. Pollo asado burrito. (This pollo appears to be seitan.)

Warrior: Yum. I really like Cena! This is a good burrito.

Peony: Pretty good


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A post was split to a new topic: Eating meat: threat or menace?

I don’t know how seriously you were asking, but, until you asked, I had never considered this. And I think part of it is b/c I consider tacos and burritos to be such different entities (I also generally strongly prefer tacos).

I can’t think of a good culinary analogy to explain my opinion, but it’s sort of like cars… A coupe isn’t just a shorter SUV, even though they ostensibly use all the same basic parts (engine, steering wheel, seats, etc.). But the diff form factor (esp w/ the space for filling) leads to different potentials in one vs. the other.

More space in the burrito doesn’t just lead to more filling but to more different types and textures in the filling, IMHO. There is also a sense of linearity and “progress” (which somehow affects my expectations regarding taste and texture) in a burrito vs. a taco; you work your way through a burrito, but not so w/ a taco. And, yes, the different possibilities (or limitations) of the tortilla make a diff, too. Also, I will not infreq eat a burrito w/ a fork and knife which, again, leads to a different experience vs. a taco.

A really fascinating question that got me thinking about some interesting things. Thanks. :slight_smile:

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Rolling a taco makes it a rolled taco, though in some places people would expect a rolled taco to be fried (i.e. a taquito or flauta). And if you heat it in sauce it’s an enchilada.

To me, the lowest common denominator of “burrito” is that it’s hot (or mostly hot) stuff in a hot flour tortilla wrapped so it’s closed at one or both ends. (Though by the time you buy or eat it, it might not be hot any more.)

This reminds me of the McDonald’s breakfast burrito! Basically a taco

It’s in a flour tortilla and rolled at one end. Nothing taco-like about that to me.

Now dated, very old millenial, but there was a NYC chef doing schtick about this.

Except for the amount of filling and the size of the tortilla. Maybe the only thing burrito about it is that it’s closed on one end :man_shrugging: even that is not particularly common in burritos.

PW – I’d like you to know that I really appreciated and enjoyed this thread.

It was a fun read and fun to follow along.

:joy: you forgot about smuckers uncrustables being classified as raviolis

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The old-school and unfortunately long-gone Mexican restaurant in Dixon that made the best flour tortillas I’ve had made burritos with smaller tortillas, filled them with just meat, and left them open at one end.

Makes sense if you’re going to eat them right away. I’ve occasionally seen them like that in Mexico, too.

I think it’s common in Tex-Mex as well.

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I feel like I must’ve had one back in the day, although I think JITB was my go-to, the few times I could stomach a fast-food breakfast burrito. :wink:

Wait, so am I saying that there’s only tacos vs. burritos??? :wink:

WTF?!?!?!?! Well, didn’t Mr. Chow called their (Chinese) dumplings “Middle Kingdom Ravioli???”

I think we have enough material for “Food Archetypes and Platonic Ideals: Threat or Menace.”

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They are fairly easy to make if you’re inclined. I prefer David Castro Hussong’s recipe (to the Samin Nosrat/Sonoratown one for example).

It’s not hard to make flour tortillas, but it seems like it’s hard to make great ones. Same goes for chapati.

Did it a good bit over the pandemic, disagree. They are quite easy to make at a high level if you let the dough relax enough to be rolled, and much of the flavor comes from the fat. I did some AB testing with suet, leaf lard, bacon fat, shortening, and vegetable oil.

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