I've been having a run of really bad lunch destinations in the past week. \n\nI was craving Mexican food earlier this week and a coworker had a coupon for a buy one get one free entree at Qdoba. Now I'm not really sure what an entree consists of at a place where everything is ordered a la carte, but figured that a burrito was as good a guess as any, so I opted for the pork.\n\nNow, according to their menu this pork had been simmered in a blend of tangy tomatillos, jalapenos, garlic and lime juice...and their marketing division deserves props for that appetizing description, because it's all a smoke and mirror act. It tasted like pork. Plain old pork. Very tender pork, but straight up pork all the same.\n\nAdd cilantro lime rice (uh, plain ole white rice with specks of green?); black beans (at least they didn't try anything pretentious there); pico de gallo (some of the blandest tomatoes and onions to ever grace a burrito); roasted chile corn salsa (for real, now? because I couldn't taste a hint of pobalano chile or jalapeno); and salsa roja (writing it in Spanish makes it more authentic. duh.), and wrap it up in a tortilla with a diameter the width of your torso. What do you get? A bland 3,000 calorie monstrosity of a burrito that needs to be dressed up with guacamole, cheese and lots of salsa to make it edible, if not very palatable.\n\nWe got the food to go and the bag for our two burritos felt like the bottom was going to fall out. Out of curiosity, I weighed the burrito when we got back to the lab. It was over 610.00 grams because my electronic scale recorded the weight as \"Err,\" and that's its max limit. That's over 1 pound and 5.43 ounces for you non-metric folk out there. Or if you prefer to express its weight more figuratively, it was the size and weight of a bunny, but didn't taste nearly as good. (Conejos son muy sabrosos!)\n\nI've also tried two tacos (pork and beef, see above for insight into the caliber of ingredients) and the three chile queso dip with chips. It was, to put it mildly, a disappointment. \n\nBut if you're looking for a sterile, fast food environment (seriously, if Chipotle is owned by McDonald's...who owns this joint?) where you can take bland, picky eaters to enjoy burritos that constitute more than your entire recommended daily allowance of calories in one fell swoop, hit up Qdoba. With that info in mind, you won't be disappointed!
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