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Caltort

The Burrito Review

By Chris MeierPublished 6 years ago 2 min read
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This week, the Burrito Review tackles the confusing franchise known as California Tortilla. The first California Tortilla opened in — you guessed it — Bethesda, Maryland.

California Tortilla, also known as Caltort (side note: Caltort sounds like a state-specific section on the California bar exam), has over fifty locations dotted all over the Mid-Atlantic. As the name implies, Caltort has zero locations in or near California.

I meet friend and burrito review frequenter Alex in the Caltort parking lot. The parking lot is small. Does it need to be this small? We walk into California Tortilla. Does it need to be this big? I order the fajita burrito with chicken. I feel like I'm dining in a cavern and parked in an elevator.

I’m a sucker for sauces. If there was a restaurant that only served savory cannoli filled with semi-solid sauces, I would be broke and really fat. I will never get sauce-fat at Caltort.

There are, like, no sauces on this burrito. It is a rice bomb with a few meager strips of chicken. If I flattened this burrito in a hydraulic press, I could wrap it around a little cardboard tube and sell it as paper towels. I’d call them Caltows.

I’m kind of worried that those rolls of recycled brown paper towels are unfinished Caltort burritos. If they are, kudos to Caltort for being #innovative.

Luckily, the Caltort burrito includes a fountain drink. The soda machine is a Coca-Cola Freestyle, it’s one of those magic touch screen boxes that gives you any type of soda with any flavor option. For example, diet caffeine free orange flavored coke is available in these glowing soda boxes. But not at Caltort.

Alex wanted a vanilla Coke, but Caltort doesn’t keep either of their $320 dollar-a-month leased touchscreen soda machines stocked, so while vanilla Coke has a button, the Freestyle doesn’t have any vanilla syrup or ad-libbed rap verses.

“Taco Bell is better than this, you can quote me on that.” Alex is also unimpressed. As we eat our unimpressive meals, we have casual adult conversation which includes curse words. Somehow, inside the empty Caltort cavern, the only three other groups of customers all end up sitting close to us. Caltort herd mentality.

So anyway, we’re chatting with curse words and being generally loud and inappropriate. There’s a family with mom, three kids, and grandma behind us talking about some guy violating his probation and going back to jail. I think it was the kid’s dad. I have a theory that good food inspires good conversation. These are the conversations inspired by Caltort.

Alex and I conduct a thorough review. We spend nearly two hours inside this California-inspired fast casual nightmare. I imagine which part of California inspired Caltort. Somewhere east of Barstow.

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