Sorry 538, La Taqueria is delicious — but it's also fatally flawed

538's months-long Burrito Bracket project is completed and the winner (spoilers!) is La Taqueria in San Francisco. This made me happy, because even though I haven't put in any legwork into national burrito quality, when I got into a dispute about Chipotle a couple of years back with Bay Area Burrito Snob Mat Honan, he ended up taking me to … La Taqueria in San Franciso to show me what real burrito goodness is all about. So now that a more rigorous data-based project is also singing the praises of La Taqueria, I feel comfortable explaining what's wrong with it and why Chipotle is so amazing.

The best burrito is the burrito you actually want to have in real life

The key is to understand what's genuinely great about La Taqueria. As Anna Marie Jester-Barry put it for 538, their burrito is "a technical marvel with a monumental first bite worthy of a national title."

Its components are good, but the nature of the burrito game is that it's a cheap food. They aren't doing anything in this regard that blows the competition out of the water. But they are assembling a burrito that is much more pleasing than Chipotle. It is both better wrapped and better mixed to create a structurally sound foodstuff that is jam-packed with flavor. It's amazing.

But it's also slow.

And there's just no way around this. Plopping ingredients down and then folding them up à la Chipotle allows a less-skilled worker to make a burrito faster than is possible with La Taqueria's more artisanal approach. That lets Chipotle obtain two crucial qualities — speed of service, and ubiquity. As my Vox colleague (and former San Franciscan) Brad Plumer put it to me, "If someone wanted to build a La Taqueria in DC, I'd go. In the absence of that, Chipotle is fine."

Indeed. But I would take the point further. There's a Chipotle two blocks from my house. And another one two blocks from my office. If either were next door to La Taqueria, they wouldn't stand a chance. Unless, that is, I was in a rush. Which, actually, I often am — at least when I'm in the mood for a burrito, which isn't exactly a high-class leisurely meal.

Convenience counts in life. La Taqueria's "technical marvel" of a burrito — though quite genuinely delicious — fatally undermines it on the convenience count. It's slow, and it's not scalable. The best burrito is the burrito you actually want to have in real life, a burrito that is both tasty and available. In other words, a Chipotle burrito.

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