Anna’s Taqueria

For all the rave reviews that Anna’s Taqueria has received since I’ve come to Boston, I must say I was thoroughly disappointed upon having my first burrito here.  At first it seemed interesting when you order the veggie burrito, as they have a collection of seemingly seasonal vegetables that they dice up and put into a burrito.  The burrito I had had sweet potato, squash, yellow pepper, carrots and broccoli.  One caveat on Anna’s is that their rice is cooked in chicken broth, but you can request vegetarian rice.  However, this rice is very dry and salty, and basically ruins the flavor of the burrito.  The salsa and guacamole are pretty average, and overall thoroughly disappointing.  For all the hype around Anna’s, I feel like they do not deserve the yearly “Best Burrito” awards that they are given, and as such, I will give them one and a half cheese sandwiches (primarily for having vegetarian rice option and a decent variety of vegetables).

Boca Grande

Boca Grande is another local chain restaurant that has a few locations in Cambridge and one in Brookline.  Boca Grande has the greatest diversity of meal options as well as vegetarian options of any of the burritoriums I have reviewed.  You can get tacos, quesadillas, burritos, enchiladas, or even tamales here.  And for most of these options, you can get bean and cheese, grilled vegetables, tofu or adobe tofu.  I have tried the tofu and the adobe tofu, and I recommend you avoid the adobe tofu at all costs.  For some reason, the adobe sauce is the most foul tasting dressing that I have ever had incorporated into a burrito.  However, despite this minefield of bad taste, I do appreciate the effort Boca Grande makes to give vegetarians options.  As a result, I’ll give Boca Grande three cheese sandwiches.

Boloco

I don’t know if you can qualify Boloco as a burrito place, as their fillings are more indicative of wrap-style establishments rather than burritoriums.  My favorite “burrito” at Boloco is actually a wrap, called “The Mediterranean”.  It is black bean hummus, tomato salsa, olives, feta cheese, rice, cucumber, balsamic vinaigrette that you can get with either fajita vegetables (onions and peppers) or marinated tofu.  You can also substitute the regular rice for brown rice at no charge.  I always get the tofu, as it is the extra firm style for which I have always expressed a fondness.  This meal is very tasty, despite having over 2 g of salt in it.  I sometimes get a smoothie (the Jimmy Carter is pretty good) to wash down all that sodium.  I’ll give Boloco three cheese sandwiches for making a solid wrap.

Chipotle

A lot of respect is given to Chipotle for being a champion of local and sustainable food (whatever that is worth for a place that is owned by McDonald’s).  I do respect the simplicity of the menu where you have the vegetarian option that can be translated into salads, tacos, burritos, and burrito bowls.  Chipotle has a good combination of flavors with their salsa and their guacamole (slathered on with reckless abandon), and you can feel confident that when you’re eating this burrito you’re making the world a better place.  However, if this was truly “food with integrity”, as they emphasize on their website, there should be a lot more vegetarian options, as on average you’ll have better integrity serving vegetables than killing pigs or cows (no matter how sustainably or organically you do it).  So, I’ll give Chipotle three and a half cheese sandwiches (they would have more if they had more than just one vegetarian choice).

Herrera’s

Herrera’s is probably the smallest of the chain burrito places that I am listing on this META review.  They don’t even have a Twitter account!  They do have two locations in downtown BostonTheir veggie burrito is quite interesting, as they include steamed broccoli, carrots, zucchini, and squash.  It’s not as flavorful as the grilled veggies at Qdoba, but they do provide an alternative flavor texture to basic onions and green peppers that other places provide.  I believe that the guacamole is one of the best that I’ve had in a burrito (that I didn’t make myself).  Altogether, I think Herrera’s makes one of the best burritos in Boston, although I don’t think their salsa is that great.  It seems that every burrito place has at least one deficiency that prevents them from being a truly great burrito.  I give Herrera’s four cheese sandwiches.

Qdoba

I’ll be honest - coming into Boston, my favorite burrito place of all time would have to be Qdoba.  If not for any other reason than their three cheese queso sauce.  I really enjoy eating their burritos, from their buttery rice to the hot salsa.  Furthermore, I believe they put the most cheese in their burrito of any of the places listed on this META review (purely anecdotal - I have no data to back up this claim).  Also, they are the only burrito place listed here that have a frequent customer card that gives you free burritos.  Any place that rewards you for returning to the same location gets bonus points in my book.  I’m probably going to get some flack for this, but Qdoba is hands down still my favorite burritorium, as they provide both a veggie burrito (with mixed zucchini, squash, onions and green peppers) and a vegetarian burrito (just with onions and green peppers, but comes with free guacamole).  Unfortunately, the guacamole is nothing special, which is probably the major detraction for Qdoba.  I’ll give Qdoba 4 cheese sandwiches, to put them as the best chain burrito place in Boston.

Au Bon Pain (ABP) - Jalapeno and Cheddar Egg and Cheddar Sandwich

Pictured above is my staple breakfast at ABP, an egg and cheese on a jalapeno cheddar bagel.  I figure by eating a jalapeno bagel, I am burning some of the exorbitant calories that I am getting from eating the rest of the sandwich.  Probably not.  Normally, I go to the ABP in Tufts Medical Center, where my lovely sandwich preparer Yngrid makes the sandwich with spinach and tomato (I have to specifically request this).  This is a lot more demanding than you would think, as Yngrid has to pick out each spinach leaf from a bucket of salad mix.  So for that alone, I’ll give ABP one cheese sandwich.  Otherwise, there are a few options available to you at ABP, the bagels are quite tasty, and come with a wide range of cream cheeses.  Unfortunately, if you’re vegan, there aren’t many options (you could get the overpriced oatmeal that is also available).  The coffee is also pretty good, especially if you manufacture a blend of the hazelnut and french vanilla.  I give ABP three cheese sandwiches overall for breakfast.

Boloco - Huevos Rancheros Burrito

I am a huge fan of breakfast burritos, and Boloco is a restaurant that serves them.  Unfortunately, the market for breakfast burritos is pretty saturated downtown between Herrera’s, Qdoba, and even Mike and Patty’s.  Unfortunately, Boloco falls into the lower quartile of these establishments (if you’re keeping score at home, that means it’s the worst of the four).  However, a mediocre breakfast burrito is still a pretty darned good start to your day.  While I feel Herrera’s, Qdoba, and Mike and Patty’s has unique qualities that make their burritos stand out, Boloco does not, which is ironic since their tagline is “inspired burritos”.  Boloco has two vegetarian breakfast options - an egg and cheese with salsa or an egg, cheese, salsa and beans burrito.  Pretty standard (same as what you’d get at Herrera’s).  However, the scrambled eggs were premade (possibly 15-20 minutes earlier), and have some weird pepper flavor (possibly pepper), which makes it inferior to Qdoba and Herrera’s.  Nevertheless, a breakfast burrito and Jimmy Carter smoothie is a good quasi-nutritious start to your day for under $7.  Two and a half cheese sandwiches.

Bruegger’s Bagels - Egg and Cheese on Rosemary Olive Oil

It is difficult for me to give an impartial viewpoint on Bruegger’s Bagels, as I have recently been spurned by them.  Here is my story: almost every day for several months, I would go to work stopping by Bruegger’s Bagels to get an egg (it’s not really egg as much as slices of a pre-made egg loaf), cheese and tomato sandwich on rosemary and olive oil bagel.  During this time, not once was I treated like a regular (something that I aspire towards in most establishments that I like), and was treated only slightly better than a human being.  My ideal breakfast bagel would be egg, cheese, tomato and spinach for under 3 dollars (available at ABP if Yngrid is working).  However, Bruegger’s refuses to pick out spinach from their salad mix (an acceptable refusal), and they have since also started charging 30 cents for tomato!  I am now paying roughly the same for two measly slices of tomato as somebody who gets sausage or bacon (or whatever other portion of pig they want to stuff in their disgusting mouths).  This to me is unacceptable behavior, reprehensible, and they should be punished for such a betrayal to a regular customer.  I don’t care what the corporate office tells you to do.  I have since boycotted Bruegger’s bagels, and suggest you do the same (shouldn’t be too hard as their bagels are not that great, outside of the rosemary olive oil).  They also have muffins that look more like souffles, and for some reason rice krispie treats.  If you’re so inclined to ignore my appeal for boycott, and actually want to get food from this fecal edifice (yup, thesaurus works), I give this one and a half cheese sandwiches, if only out of nostalgia.

Burger King - Croissan’wich

An breakfast chain that I am sure will not stab you in the back would have to be Burger King.  Of course, when you are a King, you cannot afford to betray those loyal to you, lest you face a serf rebellion.  What I most enjoy about Burger King is their pretension.  They insist that they have vastly improved the French croissant and finally made it great by putting egg and cheese (and sometimes meat).  As someone who has spent some time in France, I think they actually have the croissant down pretty well.  Whatever improvements Burger King has made by putting in industrial eggs and American cheese slices I would argue are trivial at best.  However, getting a croissanwich, hash browns and a gas station quality cup of coffee for under $4 ($3.80 to be precise) is a pretty good deal, and explains why so many people go to Burger King and McDonald’s when it is obvious how terrible the food is quality as well as health-wise here.  The breakfast combo is pretty good (the hash browns are definitely a highlight), and it is nice that Burger King has a lot of other breakfast options for vegetarians (including cinnamon buns, french toast stix, etc.).  Because of this, I’ll give Burger King two cheese sandwiches.

Dunkin’ Donuts - Flatbread Sandwich

Normally when I go to Dunkin’ Donuts I get an egg and cheese on an English muffin.  Again, like Bruegger’s Bagels, Dunkin’ Donuts uses slices of egg-like loaf and American cheese.  But the more distinctive breakfast meal at Dunkin’ Donuts would be the egg white flatbread sandwich.  While places like Subway have perfected the art of making bread-like bread, Dunkin’ Donuts has nailed bread-like cardboard.  The flatboard sandwiches an egg white-like triangle that has red and green peppers embedded within it.  The sandwich is pretty terrible, and should probably be avoided.  However, the combo meal comes with hash browns which are actually pretty good.  They are spiced with some sort of generic industrial spice, but nevertheless, they are superior to both McDonald’s and Burger King’s hash browns.  I give Dunkin’ Donuts one and a half cheese sandwiches, primarily for the hash browns.  However, if you get the egg and cheese on an English muffin, that deserves two and a half cheese sandwiches.

Finagle a Bagel - Egg and Cheese Sandwich

I am slightly indifferent to the bagels at Finagle a Bagel, as they don’t really taste very good.  However, if you go to the FaB in Park Street, you get treated to one of the greatest bagel showcases in the world.  I am talking about the conveyor belt that slices and flings a bagel upwards of 10 feet to be toasted and made into sandwiches.  I do appreciate that they will partially make my ideal breakfast sandwich by putting in tomatoes for free.  However, they will not pick out the spinach leaves to make it complete.  The cheese is slightly better than an American cheese slice, yet still not as good as a real cheese.  While the basic egg and cheese sandwich is average, I would recommend the Phoenix Press sandwich (egg, black bean salsa, avocado and cheddar cheese) as a delicious, yet slightly more expensive ($5) alternative.  Overall, unless you go to the Park Street location, there are plenty of better breakfast alternatives.  But if you enjoy seeing bagels fly at 100 mph, then get a sandwich here.

Herrera’s - Breakfast Burrito

Simplicity is the cornerstone by which many outstanding meals are made.  If you have ever watched a cooking show related to improving restaurants, they always encourage making meals more simple.  Herrera’s breakfast burrito is as simple as you can get - beans, salsa, cheese and eggs.  However, it is the ingredients that make this burrito so outstanding.  First, unlike other breakfast burritos, Herrera’s fries and scrambles the eggs fresh to order, the salsa is also very fresh tasting, and the bean puree provides a good base that flavors the entire burrito (rather than having whole black beans falling out of the burrito - a common problem).  Unfortunately, they don’t have coffee, so if you’re really tired in the morning, you’re not going to get that caffeine perk.  Also, there are a few options for vegetarians (huevos rancheros, ranchero-style burrito) if you ask them to leave out the meat, which they will do, and the price is reasonable enough that you don’t feel like you’re paying so much extra for the meat.  Nevertheless, I would argue that this is my favorite breakfast burrito (and possibly sandwich) from the chain restaurants.

McDonald’s - Egg McMuffin (without meat)

This little known chain restaurant could one day make it really big if they catered to vegetarians a little more.  There are no dedicated menu items that are vegetarian at McDonald’s, yet there are several options available if you ask for it without the sausage, bacon or ham inside.  You could get a McSkillet or breakfast burrito without the meat (though both of these burritos are awful).  Alternateively, you can try one of three formats for an egg and cheese - english muffin (Egg McMuffin), biscuit (egg and cheese biscuit), or pancake (McGriddle).  I was not interested in an egg and cheese sandwich on pancake, so I went with the next best thing - English muffin (my pretense to being British/European outweighs my ironic pretense to being from the deep south).  I am not a big fan of the way places like ABP, McDonalds, and Finagle a Bagel make their breakfast sandwiches.  While they use “real” eggs, when they fry them, the yolks become hard-boiled somehow.  This is heavily unappetizing, and for those places that offer egg whites only, I get that option primarily because of the disgusting fried/boiled yolk center.  You can’t go wrong with an egg and cheese on and english muffin, with hashbrowns and Paul Newman’s coffe, you’ve got a pretty good breakfast (even though it’s McDonald’s).  I’d give it 3 cheese sandwiches if they only had ONE vegetarian specific breakfast option.  Yet, since they don’t, I’ll give it one and a half cheese sandwiches.

Qdoba - Breakfast Burrito

Completing the third breakfast burrito of the triumvirate on this list would be Qdoba’s breakfast burrito.  Qdoba has two options - the breakfast burrito or quesadilla.  Either of which can be made vegetarian or “animal killer”.  As I have iterated before, I love breakfast burritos, and Qdoba has a very unique style to theirs, as they have eggs, potatoes, 3-cheese sauce and salsa (no beans!).  I have no evidence to prove it, but I am fairly certain that one of the cheeses in the 3-cheese is in fact opium (or other highly addictive narcotic).  If you go late in the morning (as I did), the ingredients become dried out or stale from sitting in the food buckets all morning.  Nevertheless, the flavor lubricant of this meal and saviour would have to be the 3-cheese sauce.  The carbohydrate rush of this burrito is pleasant, but slightly unfulfilling compared to the burrito of Herrera’s which takes the perfect mixture of beans, eggs, cheese and salsa of any good breakfast burrito.  The taste and originality of this burrito ranks it second on this list, just ahead of Boloco.

Rosie’s Bakery - Egg and Cheese Bagel

Rosie’s Bakery is one of those classic eating establishments whose greatest weakness is the actual description of its name (like Burger King).  If you ever go to Rosie’s bakery, probably the worst thing you can get there is a baked good.  Rosie’s is one of the most overpriced breakfast you can have on this list.  An egg and cheese on a bagel with a caffe latte costs over $7!  The coffee prices are standard, while the egg and cheese is an appalling $4.  For that price, they should have actual chickens laying eggs and homemade cheddar cheese (just so you know, they don’t).  While the egg and cheese is of really high quality (the cheddar is the sharpest I’ve had of any cheese on this metareview), the sandwich falls apart in its bagelocity.  Good bagels should be crispy on the exterior, and soft on the interior (like a falafel), while this is soft on the interior and rubbery on the exterior (like a car tire).  The cheapest baked good they have is $2 for a oatmeal raisin cookie, which is more than the universally defined as overpriced Au Bon Pain.  Even their biscotti (which should be under a dollar) is sold at $18 a pound!  Who needs a pound of biscotti?  For its ridiculously overpriced baked goods, mediocre sandwiches, and their awful coffee, I have no choice but to give Rosie’s one half cheese sandwich (only because they have a few vegetarian options that are passable).

Starbucks - Spinach Feta Eggwhite Flatbread

I don’t know what possessed Starbucks to think that they should enter the breakfast sandwich game.  Is it not enough that they make suboptimal coffee, overpriced espresso drinks, and horrible industrial snacks/pastries?  Well, now they also make awful flatbread breakfast sandwiches!  There was a brief period where Starbucks was making piadina sandwiches, which were so salty that they were inedible.  Well, Starbucks has realized this mistake and made a regular flatbread sandwich that is still so salty that it is inedible.  I got the spinach feta egg white wrap, which I assumed might be slightly healthy (it really isn’t).  This wrap tastes like something you would get for a breakfast meal on a transatlantic flight.  However, I think this was something that American Airlines (or United, etc.) said to the SYSCO: “This is terrible, our passengers won’t eat this crap”, followed by Starbucks saying “That looks pretty good to us.”  So, I would avoid this if at all possible (as well as avoiding most things at Starbucks except for the coffee/tea drinks).  Since nothing is worth eating at Starbucks, even if it is vegetarian, I have to give it no cheese sandwiches.