Counterpoint: I Can't Wait For This Bitch to Die of Chipotle

By Julianne Escobedo Shepherd | January 15, 2016 | 8:35pm

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Today, on this website, my colleague Jia Tolentino wrote that she will continue eating Chipotle “until it fucking kills her.” Theoretically, I wish I loved anything as much as Jia Tolentino claims to love Chipotle. But in practice, I really don’t, because Jia Tolentino is tripping her balls off. Chipotle’s food is fuckin’ trash.

As the taste for burritos has proliferated in the United States, the taste of burritos has naturally been diluted by so-called chefs who have no idea what they’re doing. All around New York City—a place otherwise known for its vast and delicious food offerings—there are mediocre Mexican food shops and trucks with names like “MATT AND JEN’S MEXI SABOR” or “TACO CHIC” that substitute flavor for excellent logos in fancy fonts. But nowhere does bland more acutely than Chipotle, a place that actually will put its “burritos” in a freakin bowl for you if you’re somehow too precious to eat a burrito the way people have been eating them in America for many, many years.

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To add insult to injury, everything within those cursed bowls is tasteless, toothless. Chipotle’s “salsa” is nowhere near spicy enough, if it has any flavor at all, and its assertion that its rice tastes like “cilantro-lime” is preposterous, as it does nothing of the sort. The beans seem unseasoned as well. Each time I’ve tried Chipotle I’ve had the sensation of biting into a thoroughly undressed salad, or grazing in a freakin’ field.

But let’s focus on the burrito, which is the object of Jia’s affection, and also the thing that could eventually be the death of her, and quick. First of all, it might SHOCK you as much as it does me that Jia Tolentino is from Texas, and by rights of location no doubt knows what truly good Mexican food is, and yet still worships Chipotle like it is god. It’s not just a waste of a life (eventually); it’s a waste of the entire history of that state. PEOPLE DIDN’T DIE FOR YOU TO EAT FLAVORLESS MEXICAN FOOD!

The Chipotle e.coli outbreak is the cherry on top of this trash chain, which acts like it’s all fresh and good but honestly tastes worse than the most garbage Taco Bell. When Chipotle wanted a menu revamp, they could have hired any chef in America—my beloved Chef Aarón Sánchez, say, a specialist in Mexican food who’s so deep in it he hosts a show about it—but instead, they hired a guy named Nate Appleman whose last job had been at a PIZZERIA. How does that make any goddamn sense?

Jia Tolentino is eating GARBAGE FOOD, e.coli or no, and it’s not just killing her, it’s killing me. I don’t want her to die—I actually quite like her—but if that’s what it takes for the world to realize that Chipotle is trash I wouldn’t even feed my dog, then so be it.

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Photo via Getty.