I took these pictures at El Tonayense in San Francisco's notorious Mission district. Back in the day, you could get a piping hot homemade tamale and a ballon of heroin from the same woman. She only kept one stored in her vagina, but I leave you to imagine which.
I visted my friend Liz in the Mission when I was in California. It certainly has changed. Maybe I've changed. I don't know. What I do know is that if I had walked around in the Mission with a big, expensive camera ten years ago, I wouldn't have a big, expensive camera to take pictures of burritos with anymore.
When I see a burrito, all swaddled up in aluminium foil, lying in its basket on a bed of chips, I often think of the baby Jesus in his manger.
So yeah, I know. Burrito joints with vegetarian options aren't "authentic." But this is San Francisco. Everyone's a veg these days, but they are missing out when it comes to burritos. My friend Duncan wrote something about trying to vegetarian and still eat burritos and I often think of it when I'm nearing the end of my burrito.
"And the grease pocket. The best part of a burrito is when you get down to the nub, where all the pork juice has filtered it's way down into the last bit of rice and beans and tortilla. Pure chewing satisfaction. Flavor country. Let's just say, when the water from the lettuce gets down there, it's not quite the same feeling, okay?"
When I lived in California, El Tonayense used to be one of my favorite burrito places. Then one time I found an entire piece of that wax paper that they put in the chip basket inside my burrito. I had eaten about half of the burrito when I got to the wax paper, which filled the rest of the thing out. It was pretty amazing to try and figure out how this fist-sized paper got in there. They offered me a new burrito, but who can eat more than one of those things? Since then, I'm happy to report, the only things in my burritos are the things that belong there.
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