Chipotle Mexican Grill: Much Better Than I Expected

Over the past few years I've seen Chipotle Mexican Grill fast food restaurants open up all around the area. I figured it was another awful tasting Mexican chain restaurant. But it was after reading a story about Entrepreneurial Heroes by Chipotle founder Steve Ells in Time magazine a short while back on the Chipotle success story that I decided to try the food myself. The lesson learned was that before making rash decisions based on other's opinions, I should try things myself!

Chipotle Mexican Grill is a basic no frills and modern looking restaurant, simple in design. The ones I have visited are similar in appearance and were extremely clean. The menu only has 5 basic main items and three are burritos:

Burrito: flour tortilla with cilantro-lime rice, choice of pinto or vegetarian black beans, choice of salsa, cheese or sour cream. The vegetarian burrito is served with guacamole.
Fajita Burrito: Same as the regular burrito except it's served with sauteed peppers and onions instead of beans. The veggie fajita burrito is filled with sauteed vegetables and black beans instead of meat and comes with guacamole.
Burrito Bol: This is all the fillings of the first two burritos except that it's served in a bowl without the tortilla
Tacos: You're served three tacos in either corn or soft flour tortillas, choice of meat, salsa, cheese or sour cream and romaine lettuce
Salad: This is romaine lettuce with your choice of meat, salsa and cheese. It's served with on site made Chipotle-honey vinaigrette.

The meat or veggie fillings you have a choice of are:
Chicken (marinated in Chipotle pepper adobo and grilled fresh in front of you at the restaurant)
Steak (prepared and cooked the same as the chicken)
Carnitas (pork seasoned with thyme, bay leaves, juniper berries, cracked black pepper, seared, and then braised for several hours)
Barbacoa (spicy shredded beef which has been braised with their Chipotle adobo, cumin, cloves, garlic and oregano)
Vegetarian (fresh-made guacamole and vegetarian black beans with sautéed peppers and onions.)

My favorite is the steak burrito filled with cilantro-lime rice, black beans and tomatillo-red chili (their hot) salsa. It's pretty durn spicy (though even without the salsa the meat appears to be kind of spicy.) This is a huge burrito and I'm usually pretty full by the time I finish it. But I have a difficult time having the burrito without ordering some of their chips and salsa ($1.25). My son always gets the Fajita Steak Burrito without the rice. While the steak burrito usually costs $5.85, my wife noticed the other day that they only charged her about $2.75. Being the honest person she was, she inquired to ensure that she was charged correctly and the manager told her that because the burrito was much smaller without the rice and most other ingredients he charged her less. Now ya can't beat that. My wife also orders the Chicken Fajita Burritto ($5.65), which she really enjoys. The first couple of times she tried it with steak but it turns out that the steak is a lot spicier than the chicken.

So what else sets this restaurant apart?
What they advertise is that they "believe in using meats from animals what have been raised naturally, without hormones or antibiotics and fed a vegetarian diet." They do mention that some locations DO use naturally raised meats and they are "working hard to find more suppliers to we can expand to many more locations." I like watching that they are freshly grilling and preparing the foods rather than taking out baskets of food which have been prepared, frozen and packaged off site.

I highly recommend the restaurant if you don't mind the limited menu. The restaurants are clean and the food is tasty and reasonably priced. What more can you ask?

Sources: "Time" magazine : www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1663316_1684619_1663337,00.html
Menu Items listed above are from the menus which are printed and available for the taking at any Chipotle restaurant