You Shouldn't Order Burritos At A Mexican Restaurant. Here's Why

A frozen burrito at a grocery store might cost you under a buck, depending on where you live and how much you feel like disrespecting your tongue. It tastes like salty bean mush in a probably edible blanket made from enriched wheat and hopefully not cotton. Maybe a few meat crumbs and cheese flavor have been tossed into the mix. And you certainly assume it came in a mix form before entering your local grocery store freezer and then going home with you to die a 30-second death in the microwave. On the bright side, it doesn't pummel your wallet. But sometimes you really want to bite into a burrito without expecting salty blandness or residual ice chunks.

You might assume the solution to your oral woes is to order a burrito from a Mexican restaurant. What better way to pamper your taste buds than to eat authentic Mexican food, right? Unfortunately, that authentic restaurant experience won't end with a bang for your buck but with a whimper.

It's no secret that restaurants are just as hungry for your money as you are for their food, if not more so. That means when faced with the option of using pricier or cheaper ingredients to make your meal, they may lean toward the latter to fatten their own wallet. For example, per Business Insider employees at Chipotle have been instructed to use the 7 most expensive burrito ingredients sparingly. Known as the "critical 7," they consist of shredded beef, pork, steak, chicken, cheese, sour cream, and guacamole.

Your meat-deprived burrito might instead be fleshed out with rice. What makes this doubly troubling for someone looking for a good burrito is that according to San Francisco Chronicle food critic Michael Bauer (via SF Gate), "Rice dulls the flavor of the other ingredients, adds unnecessary calories and makes the burrito messier to eat." So it adds an extra layer of difficulty to the burrito while subtracting taste and using cheaper ingredients. That's a recipe for disappointment.