El Metate

Details:

• Rating: 6.12
• Order: Burrito - $11.00
• Meat: Carne Asada - 7
• Beans: Refried - 6
• Rice: 5
• Guacamole: 8
• Crema: 8
• Salsa: 6.5
• Tortilla: 4
• Cheese: 5
• Size: 3.5
• Taste: 6.75

Description:

As the favorite taqueria of many who live in San Francisco, I had very high hopes entering El Metate. I'll start off by saying that the dining area, staff, chips, salsa bar, cantina bar were all a great touch that added to the burrito experience (and some bonus points to the "taste" category). And there was a lot of great things about the burrito too. But sadly there were also some oddities that detracted enough to drop this to the middle of the pack. The biggest negative was the construction of this very thin burrito. I've never cared much about whether a burrito is fat or thin, but I am now firmly an anything but thin type of guy. Not only was the burrito small, but the thinness made sure that many bites had only guac and crema, and others had only rice and beans. A wider burrito would at least give me the opportunity to take half a bite from one side and half a bite from the other. An even bigger issue was the folded clump of tortilla that stretched all the way from top to bottom. A fat burrito may have a clumpy top and bottom, but that is far better than a clumpy entire burrito. I counted 8 layers of tortilla in that clump...a great way to ruin a bite. Also only one salsa was good. However, all of the ingredients were pretty good. Meat was good but not enough of it, beans were solid, rice was ok, guac was great and plentiful, as was the crema. Cheese I don't even remember, and the tortilla tasted ok. The chips were multi-colored and also some were corn and some were flour (but others only got corn). So I can understand why people like the place, because they do have good fillings. But the small size, high price and poor construction were enough to put this burrito right in the middle of the pack. As it should, it falls near the bottom of a "solid" rating.

Other Notes:

Comes with chips. Sit down after order at register. Cantina in back. Salsa bar with 4 salsas, 3 picos, jalapeños, nopales.