[story] On the Fear of Biting into a Burrito You Cannot Swallow in One Bite

On the Fear of Biting into a Burrito You Cannot Swallow in One Bite 

I always order burrito bowls when I go to Chipotle. Well, to be accurate, I’d have to write those sentences in the past tense. Because that is what I always did in Boston, and what I cannot do any more living in a country without Chipotle. 

I liked how the burrito bowl provided me with a blueprint of what would be consumed — from the dollop of guac to the beans hidden under. And I was in full control of what I put on my spoon. I could choose to scoop up all the brown rice and gulp them up in one spoonful; I could pick out all the chicken pieces and stack them neatly in a corner, so that I could pick up each piece separately, evenly distributing them, one piece for one bite; most of all, I could mix everything from cheese to sour cream, from lettuce to tomato, and have a bite of everything. 

It almost seemed as if looking at a food enhanced its taste: when a ripped guy on Youtube told me that you can consume fewer calories by omitting guac from your burritos because with or without, the burrito will taste the same, I couldn’t disagree more — for it did make a difference in burrito bowls. Recognizing the presence of guac made me identify its presence on my tongue, perceive its smoothness and creamy flavor, picture in my head its role in the whole burrito bowl. And that made burrito bowls a world’s distance above the sensation burritos could give. 

But this heavenly being, lending me its holy power for a mere one year, soon disappeared from my life when I moved back to Korea. Korean burritos were, well, burritos. No burrito bowls, no real guacamole, just burritos that have been Koreanized. I did like the burrito place next to my dad’s work in Suwon. I also liked the place next to my middle school, where the most popular youths of Korea gathered to post #fusion_burrito on Instagram. But without the sacred Chipotle burrito bowl, I could not find the same level of satisfaction from any of those. 

Besides, burritos held the fundamental problem of being not burrito bowls. There are three universal truths in the world: 

1) A buttered or jammed bread will always fall condiment-side down. 

2) A cat will always land on its feet. 

3) A burrito’s core ingredient will always end up on one side, preventing the consumer from reaching it when biting from the other side. 

Yes, number three. Whenever I was faced with the task of eating a burrito, I found that I could never get a bite of everything by biting from either the left or the right. Say for example I ordered a chicken burrito; I would find that the chicken is all lined up on the right side of the burrito. When I bite in from the right side, I get a mouthful of chicken but no sauce. When I bite in from the left, I get a mouthful of sauces and rice but no chicken. And, strangely, turning the burrito 90 degrees did not solve this problem; the chicken always ended up either on the right or the left side. But if I were to bite directly down from the middle, other matters wrapped in the tortilla would squeeze out from both ends, staining the side of my lips — which is one phenomenon I absolutely despise. And, fundamentally, whichever point I choose to bite into, it is physically impossible to fit the whole circumference of the burrito into my mouth. It is an answerless problem, and I knew that only burrito bowls could solve it. 

Thus, for a long and interminable eight months, I lived in absolute agony as the pure-authentic-‘Murican-Chipotle-burrito-bowl-dream faded away from my tastebuds. (It is an irony how Chipotle could be the most authentic Mexican food I had tasted before, but to a short-term Korean immigrant in New England, nothing is impossible.) I broke into tears whenever I saw anything minutely alluding to the great burrito bowl — lettuce, ground beef, avocado… 

 

And then, one destiny-stricken day, I met: enchiladas. 

I was on a month-long trip to bits and corners of the US, half a year after my return to Korea. The first destination was LA. One evening, our family went to a Mexican place — a real one, to be sure — and ordered something I could not picture from the shape of the word. Enchilada. Sounds a little like chinchilla, or the French entrée. Is it a savory dish? dessert? Turns out, it was the best food I’d had in years. 

Enchilada. Burrito smothered in sauce, served on a plate, socially acceptable to be deconstructed outside the mouth before consumption. It had the perfect combination of richness and lightness, of creaminess and chunkiness. And, eaten at a place that was not Chipotle, it was authentic, even. 

I could tear off a bite-sized piece, mix everything within that bite, and swallow the perfectly-combined mixture. I could see through the sauce and tortilla skin to identify which ingredients were located where, then choose which ones to gulp down in this particular bite. Also, the sizes of the burritos themselves were smaller than normal, hand-held burritos — in other words, truth 3 did not matter anymore! I gobbled down on the whole plate in the minuscule timespan it would take for a crab to retract its eyes or for a snail to do the same. Oh, it was heaven served like hell — hot and steamy, but glorious. 

From that day, I now understand — burrito bowls are not the answer. Besides, Chipotle is not the answer. It is rather the enchilada, the common yet impossible-in-Korea dish, that contains the truth and peace and comfort of nostalgia. 

And, although I never told anyone before, that is one of the reasons why I wish to study in the US. For better Mexican food. 

* Read with: [조각] 한 입에 삼킬 수 없는 쌈을 싸는 두려움에 대하여