Bad Mexican food 09.26.2006

RESTAURANT: Una Mas Taqueria
ADDRESS: 683 Santa Cruz Avenue, Menlo Park, CA. 94025

BURRITO: regular carnitas:

carnitas (braised pork)

pinto beans

Mexican rice

salsa

SO, i've decided that I think this whole bad Bay Area Mexican food deal is actually amusing. Rather than recoiling in disgust when I get something odd in my tortilla, I now find it completely hysterical! What's more, i'm going to make it my life's mission to find the grossest thing I possibly can in a burrito. There's two simple rules. 1) I will only order carnitas burritos. 2) Once I badmouth a place, I can't go back.

The Una Mas website states that their current promotional slogan is: Get More Of What You Really Want! Notice the exclamation point. It denotes excitement and enthusiasm! The carnitas burrito was new on the menu. Usually I get their shrimp burrito minus the awful pineapple salsa they insist on putting on it.

When I got the burrito back to work I made my customary lateral cut. The burrito looked fairly ordinary. Maybe a little too much emphasis on the pinto beans and salsa, but I could also see some edible chunks of carnitas in there too. I ate the first half with only one minor discard. It wasn't the usual shredded and braised variety I like, but, instead, the al pastor variant which is roasted on a vertical spit and kind of looks like Greek gyros. It's the typical method of preperation that you find outside the bars on Tijuana's Revolucion. If you're half in the bag from beer and tequilla, the al pastor tacos are a shade better than the questionable bacon wrapped hot dogs. BUT, I digress. I performed a bisecting cut on the remaining burrito half which revealed something epic and horrible.




The flash makes this funny bit only slightly whiter than it actually was!

This is perhaps the biggest funny bit i've come across in a burrito. It was a thick ribbon of striated fat that had been coiled up in the burrito like one of those trick snakes that fly out of a can. It was so monumental that there wasn't any room for much else in the other half of the burrito. Under the fluorescent office lights, it glistened mesmorizingly; fatty glitter sparkling across its surface.




It's like a gristle archipelago!

Una Mas gets a NO MAS! from me and is now officially off the rotation. F-