A burrito means many things to many people. It can be a late-night snack, a fast-food staple or the object of a fight for regional dominance (don’t get between a Bay Area native and a Southern Californian when they’re arguing which half of the state produces the more authentic burrito). But for Americans — and Mexicans — the burrito enfolds the history of the way their two countries are entwined, for better and for worse.
That history is written into the food’s basic construction. The idea of a burrito is deeply Mexican and based on the traditional taco. Tacos are a longtime staple all over Mexico, and different groups enjoyed them in different ways. The Aztecs, for example, wrapped everything from chile sauce to tomatoes, turkey, eggs, honey, mushrooms, squash and avocados. Their tortillas were made of corn, or of squash and amaranth grain.
The one thing that their tortillas were not made of was wheat flour. Wheat isn’t a traditional crop in Mexico. But a burrito isn’t, technically speaking, a burrito without a wheat-flour tortilla (the wheat-flour wrapping is what differentiates a burrito from a taco). So if the wheat tortilla isn’t part of traditional Mexican cuisine, what, then, is the burrito?
Here’s where things get contentious. Food historians can’t agree on the exact birthplace of the burrito itself. All of them say it came from somewhere in “the border regions” of Mexico and the United States. But in a country that has fought with Mexico, in one way or another, over those very “border regions” for more than 150 years, that information inflames the fight rather than ending it.
The Mexican state of Sonora, just south of Arizona, is flat and arid, and its inhabitants say they’ve been growing wheat since the Spanish introduced it centuries ago. That would make Sonora a strong contender for being the burrito’s birthplace. But the U.S. state of New Mexico may have at least an equal claim on the birth of the burrito. The Pueblo Indian people of that state claim they had not only flour tortillas before the Spanish showed up, but simple fillings of meat and beans for them.
Are they correct? Or was it really the people of the northernmost territories of Mexico — territories in coastal California that have belonged to the U.S. for more than 150 years — who can boast of having invented this wonderful, versatile food? They too claim to be early wheat growers, and they have their own delicious variation on the wrap, adding fried onions, tomatoes and chiles to dried, shredded beef. (It seems much more likely that these are the people who invented fish tacos and other seafood-based Mexican dishes.)
All this matters because the burrito was invented around the same time as the United States took over those territories. It matters because the same miners, ranchers and cowboys who were packing burritos as portable, protein-rich fuel for their long journeys into the backcountry were traveling in order to create and gain wealth for one of these countries. And it matters because the multiple claims for burrito ownership reflect the many claims over the land itself. Where is the United States? Where is Mexico? The fluidity of that border — and everything that’s crossed over it — reflects the myriad ways, seen and unseen, that the United States and Mexico have influenced each other for centuries.
Despite its contested origins, there can be no denying the culinary influence of the burrito, which has long outlasted the days of borderland gold mining. The first burrito to become well-known commercially stateside was served in the 1930s at the El Cholo Spanish Cafe in Los Angeles. An El Cholo burrito was smaller than its modern descendant. The El Tepeyec restaurant in East Los Angeles, another early burrito supporter, introduced a now-familiar innovation: the “wet” burrito (served with chile sauce).
The wheat tortilla helped to spread the food’s popularity. Americans preferred wheat tortillas to corn (and still do). In addition, wheat tortillas kept better than corn for long-distance shipping, making it possible for different cities in America to develop their own regional platonic ideal of the burrito. And as the burrito spread, it got bigger in every way.
Cheese became a popular ingredient in Los Angeles restaurants. San Diego restaurants created “California” burritos stuffed with meat, french fries, guacamole and sour cream. The Southwest contributed the breakfast burrito to the canon in the mid-1970s when Tia Sophia’s, a Mexican cafe in Santa Fe, began serving a morning meal of tortillas filled with items including bacon and potatoes and covered in chili and cheese.
Alas, there can be only one champion burrito. And America’s current gold standard, the model for burritos in fast-food chains like Chipotle, is the Mission burrito. The Mission was invented in the El Faro restaurant and grocery in San Francisco in the early 1960s. The story goes that El Faro’s owner, Febronio Ontiveros, had a large order of “sandwiches” to fill for the local firehouse. Desperate for something to feed the hungry firemen, he stuffed tortilla shells with a large array of ingredients, including rice, whole beans and guacamole. The results were so massive that he had to use multiple tortilla shells and foil “sleeves” to hold everything together.
That experiment turned out to be the winning formula: Americans have been feasting on overstuffed burritos ever since.
There are some holdouts, like Taco Bell, with its famously austere bean burrito. Ironically, the Taco Bell chain may be making the last truly “authentic” burritos in America — lean, cheap units consisting of nothing but beans and a tortilla. It’s worth noting that Glen Bell, founder of the Taco Bell chain, founded his first Mexican-style food stand in 1953 in San Bernardino, in Southern California. The World War II veteran learned what made an authentic burrito simply by looking at what his neighbors in San Bernardino were eating.
Nowadays, though, Bell’s former neighbors are probably eating a much bigger burrito. At the annual Garcia’s World Burrito Eating Championship, which is held during the New Mexico State Fair in Albuquerque, participants devour burritos that weigh at least a quarter of a pound and are stuffed with beef, beans and green chiles. The burrito may be an old food, but Americans keep finding ways to make it new.
Caille Millner is a journalist based in Berlin and the author of a memoir, “The Golden Road: Notes on My Gentrification.”