I like all sorts of food but as a general cheapskate I eat a lot of Mexican food, especially burritos at the local establishments. The first and most important thing to know about eating Mexican in Boston is that Boston is not very close to Mexico. Mexico is closer to places like California and Texas where I am sure you can eat much better Mexican food than you can here. So any guide to eating Mexican food here is making the best of what we have rather than trying to appease snotty Californians who like to justify their lives by stating things like – There isn’t any good Mexican food in Boston when they visit. This is a similar phenomenon to when New Yorkers come to Boston and claim that there aren’t any good bagels or pizza in Boston. While they may be correct that the best of their world and customs isn’t available here their statements mainly come out of ignorance and insecurity.

So I must start with the bottom of the barrel Mexican food - TacoBell (sometimes also a KFC like near Inmann Square). I eat at the Bell often enough to be able to provide some pros and cons for the place. I used to go to the Taco Bell near Boston University at Warren Towers when I was living on Bay State Rd and I recently revisited it when I was taking a Java class. Taco Bell is a typical industrial fast food chain where important executives debate how much synthetic cheese polymer they can mix with the real cheese before anyone notices the difference. The cheese doesn’t taste like cheese there because it isn’t cheese. The one reason that I go to Taco Bell is that the executives realized that Americans like myself don’t understand real Mexican food very well and don’t know what a Chimichanga is. The most important example of this is that Taco Bell is one of the rare places where you can actually get that weird American style taco that you can make in a kit you buy at the supermarket with hard shell tacos, taco flavoring for your ground beef, tomatoes, sour cream, and cheese. If you to do any other Mexican establishment they just don’t make hard shell tacos often enough to have a factory set-up with a giant dispenser of sour cream polymer to squirt on your tacos supreme. So when I have an urge for an American style taco I go to the bell where the little dog tells me to even if they are also frying chicken at a KFC in the same location. The other advantage of TacoBell is that it is dirt cheap for everything and you can get stupid things like a burrito with just refried beans in it.

Burritos

Moving up the food chain a bit are the various burrito shop locations that are what most people are looking for. The most popular of these in Brookline is Anna’s Taqueria. They have two locations near me. The newer one on Harvard street near the corner of Commonwealth was so popular that it expanded to twice the size recently. The other one is on Beacon Street on the way to Washington Square. For a while I was a fan of Anna’s Taqueria but I have some serious gripes about their burrito delivery team. The gripe is about their delivery of sour cream and guacamole. In some strange attempt to save money on sour cream and guacamole they use a spatula to flit a small amount of the savory sauces onto the burrito. In my personal judgment these sauces are very important to the overall value of the finished product. The amount they flit onto the burrito is about one fifth of what I would consider to be the appropriate amount of filling. So I need to ask for extra sour cream and guacamole. They don’t have a real love for people like me who order outside of the standard menu so when I ask for the extra they flit another fifth of each item, charge me extra for it, and still fall very short of my expectations for my burrito. Because of this I will avoid Anna’s when I can despite their convenient locations. The one thing Anna’s does have going for it is a fairly convenient location.

Another option for a burrito is Baja Bettie’s in Brookline Village near the T station. Their burritos are everything you could hope for with interesting names and stuffed very fat. They are stuffed so fat that they use two tortillas to wrap the burritos. Each burrito has an interesting name like the California, a burrito that includes two choices of meat or other toppings. Jeremy swears by this place because he feels that the quality elicits visiting it over other similar locations. He also is very attracted to the salsas of variable spiciness available on a side counter that you can take-out in small containers. The décor is also indicative of a more intense attitude with bottles of spicy sauces captured from all over the world on the ledges of the walls. My only problem is that their burritos appear to be over priced for what you get. A burrito at another place normally costs $3.75-$4.00 but the burritos at Baja Bettie’s cost $8.25 after tax. That seems steep to me and makes me want to go to a lower priced option that still has good burritos.

My personal favorite place of the main burrito joints in Brookline is Boca Grande. It is hidden in a nook near the side of Coolidge Corner on Beacon Street. It has fairly accessible back-street parking that is a big plus when comparing it to the Anna’s on Beacon street that is almost impossible to park near. I think that Boca Grande provides a good medium between Baja Bettie’s and Anna’s. Boca Grande is actually almost a full service restaurant as it serves a lot of dishes that look like meals in heated plates but the burrito makers there are more pliable to my wishes for more liquid fillings (sour cream and guacamole) and at a reasonable price.

Guacamole

I have tried to buy guacamole at the supermarkets including Stop and Shop and Shaws. Both offer very gross facsimiles of guacamole in packages that vacu-seal guacamole packaged in Florida or California inside of a tub. You can unleash the “fresh” guacamole into the tub and have at it. It is not an acceptable product.

The chain supermarkets are put to shame by the guacamole available at Whole Foods. The people at Whole Foods follow one of two good recipes when they make their fresh guacamole. The recipes are either the plain stuff or the spicy. If you don’t like the spicy guacamole then read the labels carefully. The guac is usually close to a bag of gringo chips that are to me the best way to consume the guacamole.

For a total guacamole treat you also can go to Ole in Inmann Square. Ole is at the high end of Mexican food. I generally get a bit grossed out by too high end Mexican food, including a time that I ate fried worms while in Mexico City on a business trip. The big draw to the guacamole at Ole is that it is made at your table to your taste in a giant mortar and pestle set-up in front of you. I rarely have a hankering for the rest of the menu at Ole so I recommend going there to get a margarita after an ImprovBoston show while sharing some fresh guacamole late at night when you aren’t so obligated to eat off the whole menu. They also have good margaritas.

Mexican Bar/Restaurants

The closest Mexican places to me aren’t that good. The Sunset Cantina is at the end of St. Paul Street at the corner of St. Paul and Commonwealth. Their claim to fame for me is that they are on the iDine discount plan so you can save 10% off the meal put towards frequent flyer miles if you are a member of the rewards network and use the right card. The place is normally full of bratty BU students and the last time I was there I noticed that it was mainly groups of either guys or girls which indicates that the BU crowd doesn’t see it as a worthy place to bring a date. The problem they have is their menu is too broad for them to be able to cook anything very well. So the menu drives you to choices where you can get some rather brownish green looking guacamole on your hamburger or a southwestern burger. But you can get pasta and other non-mexican dishes there too. I wouldn’t recommend it to a friend.

A better place is the Café Sol Azteca on Beacon street close to Fenway and the Landmark center. The big selling point for me of Sol Azteca is that they have outdoor al fresco seating on warm clear days. The food is good authentic style Mexican like they have a Ole which is often over kill for a burrito take-out day but works well for a sunny day when I just want to be outside and enjoy the sunshine and nice weather.

The main thing I normally want out of a Mexican place for a bar, the bar was set in Harvard Square at The Border Café. The Border has been around for ages and provides a great party atmosphere for eating out. The meals are super cheap since they mainly subsidize cheap food by selling lots of margaritas. Not only is the food cheap but the non-alcoholic drinks like iced tea and lemonade come in cups designed to be used by Andre the Giant. They are the largest legal size of cups available for these sorts of drinks and I think they are the equivalent of a big gulp. This is important to me because I am one of those people who drinks hundreds of glasses of water with my meals when the beverages are accessible. There used to be a trick at the Border, that I used to use with my friends, to get through their incredibly busy front gate. In the basement they legally have set aside a number of non-alcoholic tables. Because most people go to the Border Café to get drunk on margaritas, the iced tea drinking freaks like myself can get ahead of the whole line by asking for a non-alcoholic table. I haven’t tried it in a while but it should still work. Among my favorite dishes there is the tostada because it is essentially a salad inside of a giant fried tortilla shell. Everything in it is edible. The Border Café also is very prompt and good at providing nachos with salsa with constant replenishment and a system for keeping the nachos hot, dry, and salty all the time. They also have a second location many people don’t know about in Saugus on Rt. 1 that is a little easier to get a table at but it does discourage drinking to go to a place that far out of the city. I imagine suburbanites go there and get soused.

Another great place to hit is the Cactus Club. It is the best meat market Mexican place with a big open bar area in the front of it. What I mean by a meat market is that it is a place where a lot of people go to pick each other up. I have been there on numerous occasions with friends where we met cool women and hung out there for a while then roamed Boston for a while. There are some good pictures of Dave K. from a Cactus Club night. The food is actually quite good if you get past drunken scenes in the bar or get slapped by a hot bartender and need to take a time-out somewhere.

For a more family friendly sit-down Mexican place I am a big fan of the Iguana Cantina in Waltham. The main attraction of the Iguana is the thirty-foot papier-mâché talking iguana that greets you automatically in an Arnold Schwartzenegger voice to say things like “Asta la vista baby”. The menu is also good and the food interesting. They have a patio that you can eat on in the back and an interesting family atmosphere where they decorate ceiling tiles in memorial to past co-workers. They have been around long enough that there is plenty to ponder as you look at the ceiling.

I actually have been to even more Mexican places than these but I figure that these are the highlights. Drop me a line if you have your own opinions.

For other guides/opinions in Boston for Mexican food:
http://www.pepperfool.com/dining/states/mass.html
http://www.burritoblog.com/
http://www.harbus.org/news/2002/11/12/Ae/Boston.Burrito.Battle-320371.shtml