The Quesada Mexican Grill Burrito

The continuing search for Toronto's best burrito!

I am a brown bagger.

Every day I enjoy bringing my lunch to work. It is cheaper and healthier, plus I know there will be nothing in it that I don’t like. So it is very rare that I find myself at work without my lunch bag. Today is one of those days.

Probably the worst thing about having to buy my lunch is figuring out what I want. The food court in our building is OK but I wanted something else. That's when I remembered that there is a Quesada Mexican Grill less than a five minute walk away, just west of John Street on Wellington.

Burrito time!

When I walked in, I liked how clean the place looked. They are licensed with a limited bottled beer selection but, hey, it's a work day and I was getting the burrito to go.

Their meat selection covered all the bases ... chile-lime shrimp, oven roasted chicken breast, steak, ancho chile adobo seasoned pork, spicy chipotle chicken (hot) and two veggie choices to chose from. For comparison's sake, I always order a chicken burrito the first time in so I can judge a shop's burrito using the same standards. If there is a second visit, I can order something more exotic. For this initial visit, I ordered the large oven roasted chicken breast.

I found the service to be excellent. I was greeted right away and the fellow that served me was fast, friendly, helpful and seemed to enjoy what he was doing.

I found there were limited ingredients to add to my burrito. I went with rice, black beans, cheese, lettuce, onion, medium green salsa and burrito sauce, which the server said would be "smokey". The tortilla is warmed first before the items are added, then wrapped in a foil before being pressed in a grill.

The large burrito uses a 12" tortilla which was warm and soft with some browning on it from the grill. As it had been wrapped before grilling, the tortilla was not crunchy where the grill marks were. I missed the crunch.

I was surprised to find how bland it was with my first few bites. The rice and the cheese were almost tasteless. The chicken had a nice texture but little flavour. It wasn't until I hit the black beans that I found any flavour. The sauce seemed to be further down and had a decent kick to it.

Overall, although the service was great, the burrito was not. There is a definite lack of seasoning to the ingredients and meat.

I was disappointed.