Intestinal Apocalypse Monthly, September 2013back to archive
IN THIS APOCALYPSE....
A Few Words from Our Honcho features...a few words from Our Honcho, seated comfortably and complacently in a sofa-strewn corner suite atop Burritoeater Towers.
Bite. Chew. Mull. takes a look at slabular encounters (all one of them) recently experienced by our panel of judge-doofuses.
It's been a minute or three since the last Apocalypse offering, so Dear Beano this time comprises what's basically a bunch of reruns.
Burritoeater Hall of Fame Inductees turns the spotlight away from our heat-seeking workforce of arm-waving glory-hounds and over onto a few unsuspecting individuals who've played a crucial role in the growth, domination, downfall, and subsequent ruination of the Burritoeater brand.
And (epilogue) lays out how you can unsubscribe from all this silliness.
Pull up a food!
<> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <>
"One bean in a burrito? One?! How does such a thing occur?"
--> Tacos El Tonayense (Harrison/14th St.), 4/7/2008
<> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <>
A FEW WORDS FROM OUR HONCHO
Gist of Rambling Speech: "So Long"
We don't know what were you doing ten years ago, but it was around then that we began writing compulsively about one kind of food in one city.
In 2003-2004, we polluted tens (maybe even dozens) of inboxes with several editions of Burritoeater's Intestinal Apocalypse Weekly, a lo-fi missive that chronicled our nascent panel's hunt for the finest burritos in San Francisco. At the time, its tone was hailed by readers and critics alike as "brash-headed," "hungry-headed," and "lunk-headed," while the local food-writing establishment dismissed its sophomoric grasp of the culinary vocabulary as "dunder-headed," "bluder-headed," and, in a truly lunk-headed turn of its own, "lunk-headed." (Alternate truth: Everyone thought it was super-rad.) All recipients, however, were quick to characterize the Apocalypse as "really too frequent."
Then, for five years beginning in 2005, Burritoeater's newsletter savvy hit its stride as we published the instantly legendary Intestinal Apocalypse Monthly. San Francisco burritos were consumed by our panel nearly faster than our review staff could write; taqueria-related queries from our hundreds of readers were addressed with tactful wisdom or, more often, simply dismissed outright with back-of-hand quippery; bullshit was called regularly; the passive voice, however, was rarely used, unlike it has been for the last 50 or so words here. These were the steak-and-potato (so to speak) burrito days.
Now it's 2013, and after a fallow period that's seen one single edition published in the last three years, the iconic Apocalypse has returned for a final go-around in periodic form over the next few months. And as we sit on the threshold of our 1000th San Francisco burrito review -- we're at 983 at the time of writing -- we reckon it's high time we hung up our mustachioed pen once we hit that nice round four-digit number later in the year.
So now's as good a time as any to announce with light heart and nimble fingers that, after ten years on the San Francisco taqueria beat, we will no longer regularly update Burritoeater.com once we publish our 1000th review.
Don't look like that; don't be sad. Celebrate! Celebrate good times! Celebrate the end of an era that's been rife with oblique recollections of lunch, cast-aside aluminum foil, and of course, quite a lot of mustaches.
<> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <>
"We raised our palm for a high-five; we were left hanging."
--> La Taqueria, 7/11/2005
<> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <>
BITE. CHEW. MULL.
Our Farewell Tour Begins
Follow our slog toward 1000 reviews on the Burritoeater Blargh as we make final rounds of our favorite San Francisco taquerias; we'll also take one for the team and try one more ill-conceived burrito from our top whipping post La Taqueria at some point, if only to pay lip service to the notion of maintaining a balance of slabular excellence versus burrito-shaped hogwash.
Taq. El Castillito (Castro), 9/7/2013, Super al Pastor: 8.67 mustaches
All the usual Castillito trademarks made this foiled food the delicious success it was. Then a guy in a blue Facebook logo T-shirt walked by.
<> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <>
"Double-positive intangibility shot through the roof, and that never doesn't count for something with our panel."
--> Dos Piñas, 2/26/2011
<> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <>
DEAR BEANO
Old Questions, New Answers. Also, Some Old Answers.
Through all his years of answering Burritoeater reader e-mail amid a number of issued restraining orders, our man Beano never once complained about his pittance of a wage (namely, a bulk discount on pallets of horchata). And for that, let's all raise a toast to our very own taqueria sage. There's something to be said for a person who works real cheaply and doesn't bellyache about it.
Lob your queries forth at dearbeano@burritoeater.com. Because if you don't, we'll just continue to run this feature all greatest-hits style. Either way, irascibility is imminent.
Dear Beano: So glad to hear that the networks have renewed the Intestinal Apocalypse for another season. Will there be a touring version for the kids? Frijoles on Ice?
Dear Apocalypse reader: Um. No.
Dear Beano: Your least favorite kinds of burritos?
Dear Apocalypse reader: Abalone. Ice and Beans. Gherkin. Sesos (duh). La Taqueria.
Dear Beano: Let me know when it's time for the IPO!
Dear Apocalypse reader: You're kidding, yes? Even Burritoeater wasn't around in 1999.
Dear Beano: Anything in particular stand out over the last several years in your quest for the perfect burrito?
Dear Apocalypse reader: (Jim, grab the projector and cue up that "wistful montage" sequence set to the schmaltzy soundtrack strings, will you? Thanks, Jim.) OK, so here we are on New Year's Day 2003, eating a burrito at Chino's Taq. in the Outer Richmond...our first foray into the mustache-rating game, hundreds of burritos ago...look at how young our panel is there!...Oh, this was the day later that same year when La Placita wedged an unmelted slice of Borden cheese-food into our lunch, and in the process rang up only two mustaches -- two mustaches! -- on our novel contraption, the Burritoeater Mustachometer...some pretty unhappy faces there...so grim...Here we are on the last night of our 2004 Scrum, when Papalote pulled off its then-unthinkable upset over heavy favorite Taq. San Francisco in the finals...look at the stunned crowd!...OK, it's a couple years later now with this one, that time when Our Honcho got his picture in the paper...his mom sure got a kick out of that...huh? what's that?...yeah, that was taken at Taq. San Francisco, too...Hang on, let me get my horchata....
...Oh, here's a personal favorite...this was taken at the ground-breaking ceremony for Burritoeater Towers...who invited the Army Corps of Engineers?...but at least we got to bust out our corporate mascot, Mr. Mustache, for the first time that day...Alright, so here's our panel at El Castillito with our pals at Burritophile.com...that whole "feud" our camp supposedly had with theirs in the summer of '05, we all just contrived that as a clever PR stunt...This one's at Papalote on 24th St., the night of our 500th on-record burrito in the summer of '07...Oh, check this! Best fan gift ever -- a handmade mustache pillow!...And...oh, do we have to go out with this, Jim?...alright, fine, so this is the other night at La Parrilla Grill in the Mission...it's a rainy Sunday, the place is virtually empty, the burrito was nothing special (although the post-burrito churro ruled)...hey, it can't be Slab Scrum championships and civic folk-hero adulation and nine mustaches every night...but it was still nice to be there. I guess I like taquerias. (Cut it, Jim. Thanks, Jim.)
<> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <>
"One look at its up-and-down Mustache Ratings through the years and it's clear that this place is tougher to figure out than a four-dimensional Rubik's Cube."
--> Taq. El Castillito (Mission), 10/10/2012
<> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <>
BURRITOEATER HALL OF FAME INDUCTEES
The Secret Weapons Behind Our Easy Millions
Over the last decade, we've been on the business end of all sorts of kind and admirable help from friends, Web designers, press folks, arms dealers, you name it. As we approach lights-out time here at Burritoeater Towers, a small handful of these individuals deserve special shout-outs.
First in a series:
Ryan Purves bravely built up Burritoeater.com from its slim foundational beginnings of sand and toothpicks, and the site has stood strong in all the years since. You'll notice we haven't changed much of the site's look since then? That's because without Ryan, we kind of don't know what the hell we're doing. Anyway, who needs user commenting and RSS feeds? That's all so 2005.
Cole Goeppinger supplied Burritoeater.com with valuable hosting space upon the site's launch; soon after, he provided big help getting everything moved over to a more robust server situation once it became frighteningly clear that we had a major hit on our hands. Plus, he's got fantastic hair and has been to dozens of countries.
<> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <>
"Everyone in town knows by now that Softness + Oversauciness --> Creeping gloop."
--> El Tesoro (O'Farrell), 5/9/2009
<> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <>
(epilogue)
Please forward freely, yet responsibly.
Newsletter subscription addition/removal requests, questions, comments, and/or anecdotes always welcome: ch@burritoeater.com.
Now for this month's hidden bonus track.
The Intestinal Apocalypse Monthly, Burritoeater.com, and the Great Mustache logo are brought to you by the Exploding Head Trick Publishing Co.
Yours, in delicious horchata,
Burritoeater.com
A Few Words from Our Honcho features...a few words from Our Honcho, seated comfortably and complacently in a sofa-strewn corner suite atop Burritoeater Towers.
Bite. Chew. Mull. takes a look at slabular encounters (all one of them) recently experienced by our panel of judge-doofuses.
It's been a minute or three since the last Apocalypse offering, so Dear Beano this time comprises what's basically a bunch of reruns.
Burritoeater Hall of Fame Inductees turns the spotlight away from our heat-seeking workforce of arm-waving glory-hounds and over onto a few unsuspecting individuals who've played a crucial role in the growth, domination, downfall, and subsequent ruination of the Burritoeater brand.
And (epilogue) lays out how you can unsubscribe from all this silliness.
Pull up a food!
<> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <>
"One bean in a burrito? One?! How does such a thing occur?"
--> Tacos El Tonayense (Harrison/14th St.), 4/7/2008
<> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <>
A FEW WORDS FROM OUR HONCHO
Gist of Rambling Speech: "So Long"
We don't know what were you doing ten years ago, but it was around then that we began writing compulsively about one kind of food in one city.
In 2003-2004, we polluted tens (maybe even dozens) of inboxes with several editions of Burritoeater's Intestinal Apocalypse Weekly, a lo-fi missive that chronicled our nascent panel's hunt for the finest burritos in San Francisco. At the time, its tone was hailed by readers and critics alike as "brash-headed," "hungry-headed," and "lunk-headed," while the local food-writing establishment dismissed its sophomoric grasp of the culinary vocabulary as "dunder-headed," "bluder-headed," and, in a truly lunk-headed turn of its own, "lunk-headed." (Alternate truth: Everyone thought it was super-rad.) All recipients, however, were quick to characterize the Apocalypse as "really too frequent."
Then, for five years beginning in 2005, Burritoeater's newsletter savvy hit its stride as we published the instantly legendary Intestinal Apocalypse Monthly. San Francisco burritos were consumed by our panel nearly faster than our review staff could write; taqueria-related queries from our hundreds of readers were addressed with tactful wisdom or, more often, simply dismissed outright with back-of-hand quippery; bullshit was called regularly; the passive voice, however, was rarely used, unlike it has been for the last 50 or so words here. These were the steak-and-potato (so to speak) burrito days.
Now it's 2013, and after a fallow period that's seen one single edition published in the last three years, the iconic Apocalypse has returned for a final go-around in periodic form over the next few months. And as we sit on the threshold of our 1000th San Francisco burrito review -- we're at 983 at the time of writing -- we reckon it's high time we hung up our mustachioed pen once we hit that nice round four-digit number later in the year.
So now's as good a time as any to announce with light heart and nimble fingers that, after ten years on the San Francisco taqueria beat, we will no longer regularly update Burritoeater.com once we publish our 1000th review.
Don't look like that; don't be sad. Celebrate! Celebrate good times! Celebrate the end of an era that's been rife with oblique recollections of lunch, cast-aside aluminum foil, and of course, quite a lot of mustaches.
<> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <>
"We raised our palm for a high-five; we were left hanging."
--> La Taqueria, 7/11/2005
<> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <>
BITE. CHEW. MULL.
Our Farewell Tour Begins
Follow our slog toward 1000 reviews on the Burritoeater Blargh as we make final rounds of our favorite San Francisco taquerias; we'll also take one for the team and try one more ill-conceived burrito from our top whipping post La Taqueria at some point, if only to pay lip service to the notion of maintaining a balance of slabular excellence versus burrito-shaped hogwash.
Taq. El Castillito (Castro), 9/7/2013, Super al Pastor: 8.67 mustaches
All the usual Castillito trademarks made this foiled food the delicious success it was. Then a guy in a blue Facebook logo T-shirt walked by.
<> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <>
"Double-positive intangibility shot through the roof, and that never doesn't count for something with our panel."
--> Dos Piñas, 2/26/2011
<> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <>
DEAR BEANO
Old Questions, New Answers. Also, Some Old Answers.
Through all his years of answering Burritoeater reader e-mail amid a number of issued restraining orders, our man Beano never once complained about his pittance of a wage (namely, a bulk discount on pallets of horchata). And for that, let's all raise a toast to our very own taqueria sage. There's something to be said for a person who works real cheaply and doesn't bellyache about it.
Lob your queries forth at dearbeano@burritoeater.com. Because if you don't, we'll just continue to run this feature all greatest-hits style. Either way, irascibility is imminent.
Dear Beano: So glad to hear that the networks have renewed the Intestinal Apocalypse for another season. Will there be a touring version for the kids? Frijoles on Ice?
Dear Apocalypse reader: Um. No.
Dear Beano: Your least favorite kinds of burritos?
Dear Apocalypse reader: Abalone. Ice and Beans. Gherkin. Sesos (duh). La Taqueria.
Dear Beano: Let me know when it's time for the IPO!
Dear Apocalypse reader: You're kidding, yes? Even Burritoeater wasn't around in 1999.
Dear Beano: Anything in particular stand out over the last several years in your quest for the perfect burrito?
Dear Apocalypse reader: (Jim, grab the projector and cue up that "wistful montage" sequence set to the schmaltzy soundtrack strings, will you? Thanks, Jim.) OK, so here we are on New Year's Day 2003, eating a burrito at Chino's Taq. in the Outer Richmond...our first foray into the mustache-rating game, hundreds of burritos ago...look at how young our panel is there!...Oh, this was the day later that same year when La Placita wedged an unmelted slice of Borden cheese-food into our lunch, and in the process rang up only two mustaches -- two mustaches! -- on our novel contraption, the Burritoeater Mustachometer...some pretty unhappy faces there...so grim...Here we are on the last night of our 2004 Scrum, when Papalote pulled off its then-unthinkable upset over heavy favorite Taq. San Francisco in the finals...look at the stunned crowd!...OK, it's a couple years later now with this one, that time when Our Honcho got his picture in the paper...his mom sure got a kick out of that...huh? what's that?...yeah, that was taken at Taq. San Francisco, too...Hang on, let me get my horchata....
...Oh, here's a personal favorite...this was taken at the ground-breaking ceremony for Burritoeater Towers...who invited the Army Corps of Engineers?...but at least we got to bust out our corporate mascot, Mr. Mustache, for the first time that day...Alright, so here's our panel at El Castillito with our pals at Burritophile.com...that whole "feud" our camp supposedly had with theirs in the summer of '05, we all just contrived that as a clever PR stunt...This one's at Papalote on 24th St., the night of our 500th on-record burrito in the summer of '07...Oh, check this! Best fan gift ever -- a handmade mustache pillow!...And...oh, do we have to go out with this, Jim?...alright, fine, so this is the other night at La Parrilla Grill in the Mission...it's a rainy Sunday, the place is virtually empty, the burrito was nothing special (although the post-burrito churro ruled)...hey, it can't be Slab Scrum championships and civic folk-hero adulation and nine mustaches every night...but it was still nice to be there. I guess I like taquerias. (Cut it, Jim. Thanks, Jim.)
<> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <>
"One look at its up-and-down Mustache Ratings through the years and it's clear that this place is tougher to figure out than a four-dimensional Rubik's Cube."
--> Taq. El Castillito (Mission), 10/10/2012
<> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <>
BURRITOEATER HALL OF FAME INDUCTEES
The Secret Weapons Behind Our Easy Millions
Over the last decade, we've been on the business end of all sorts of kind and admirable help from friends, Web designers, press folks, arms dealers, you name it. As we approach lights-out time here at Burritoeater Towers, a small handful of these individuals deserve special shout-outs.
First in a series:
Ryan Purves bravely built up Burritoeater.com from its slim foundational beginnings of sand and toothpicks, and the site has stood strong in all the years since. You'll notice we haven't changed much of the site's look since then? That's because without Ryan, we kind of don't know what the hell we're doing. Anyway, who needs user commenting and RSS feeds? That's all so 2005.
Cole Goeppinger supplied Burritoeater.com with valuable hosting space upon the site's launch; soon after, he provided big help getting everything moved over to a more robust server situation once it became frighteningly clear that we had a major hit on our hands. Plus, he's got fantastic hair and has been to dozens of countries.
<> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <>
"Everyone in town knows by now that Softness + Oversauciness --> Creeping gloop."
--> El Tesoro (O'Farrell), 5/9/2009
<> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <>
(epilogue)
Please forward freely, yet responsibly.
Newsletter subscription addition/removal requests, questions, comments, and/or anecdotes always welcome: ch@burritoeater.com.
Now for this month's hidden bonus track.
The Intestinal Apocalypse Monthly, Burritoeater.com, and the Great Mustache logo are brought to you by the Exploding Head Trick Publishing Co.
Yours, in delicious horchata,
Burritoeater.com
