Anna's Taqueria

Most people who know about this blog, and I think there are now over a dozen of you weirdos, are familiar with Anna's Taqueria. So I am not exposing some hidden jewel here. But what I am about to do is convince you that you have been ordering the wrong thing there. Here we go:

Remember when I said El Pelon Taqueria serves my favorite burrito? No, well see those blue words in the last sentence? Click on those. I was nice enough to make the link and all. Lots of people have said to me, "I'm surprised your favorite burrito isn't Anna's Taqueria." Lots of people are like Heather and some other person. I respond to these lots of people by shrugging. But now that I have a dumb blog I can expand on that shrug.

Although El Pelon Taqueria has my favorite burrito, Anna's has my favorite entree at a burrito shop. It is their modified quesadilla. It is better than the El Pelon Taqueria burrito. And I am sure it will be your next order there if you read the words that follow.

First, here's a picture:

Yummy! So, yeah you know about quesadillas and stuff. Well the secret to creating this perfect Anna's entree is you have to ask for your preferred burrito ingredients. For me this means asking for both beans and rice. By default it just comes with beans and no rice. They sometimes say "that's $.15 extra" for the beans/rice, if that happens just nod or something. As I'll explain later, you can afford it. I get chicken, black beans, rice, lots of salsa, lettuce and hot sauce. Since it is a quesadilla, it has lots of gooey cheese inside and the outside has been grilled with some oil and it is nice and crispy. They usually have a tortilla already on the grill so they make it really fast, it will not slow you down.

Now to the cost. Check out the menu. A regular burrito (which is small and comes with no cheese) is $4.85. A super burrito (which is a little bigger, but comes with cheese) is $5.35. Those are great deals for delicious burritos. However, look at how much a quesadilla is. Well you don't have to look because I will tell you, it is $4.50. I'm not quite sure which size tortilla they use, but let's say it is the regular burrito size. The quesadilla costs $.35 less, and you also get all that cheese and oily tortilla crispiness. I like to think they are paying you to add cheese and crispiness. If they use the super burrito sized tortilla they are paying you $.85 for just a crispy, yummy tortilla. This is what I refer to as Anna's Burrito Arbitrage. This means you could potentially make money getting the quesadilla if there existed a burrito trading market, and there really should be. 

So this all sounds good, and I think I've convinced you, but I need to point out that I don't get this very often when I go to Anna's. 

But, Jeff you just typed a lot of good things, why don't you get it all the time?

Ugh, you again asking me questions. Don't you think I was going to explain why? Well I don't get it because I usually get Anna's to go and bring it home. The quesadillas you have to eat right away or you lose the crispiness and it gets a touch oily. So I only get the quesadilla when I eat there.  However, another benefit to eating there is I get their orange juice. It is a big cup of freshly squeezed oranges, and it is delicious. It is like $2 which is pretty cheap for squeezed oranges. If you add it all together, that meal pictured above was less than $7. Next time you go there, you're getting the quesadilla, aren't you?

Taco Bell Redemption

Hey guys, remember when I went to Taco Bell and had a really disappointing taco? No? Oh, OK. Bye.

Oh, still here? Well, I went back to Taco Bell and I didn't mess around. I got a Meximelt, the best thing at Taco Bell. Here it is:

OK, it doesn't look so good, but just trust me it is good. It has ground beef, fiesta salsa and cheese. I think Taco Bell knows what they have here, because they keep jacking up the price on Meximelts. It used to be one of the cheapest things on the menu, like $0.89, now it is up to $1.79 or so. Worth every cent.

Hmm, this was a short blog. Umh, did you know at Taco Bell you can basically ask for any combination of ingredients and make anything you want? So the menu is limitless. And there's a secret green sauce. That's the best I've got. OK. Bye.

Lambert's Rainbow Fruit Sub

So I got a sub at Lambert's Rainbow Fruit. Getting the address for that link and the title is the first I have heard of that full name. I just thought it was Lambert's, but now I am going to be annoying and always say the full name, Lambert's Rainbow Fruit. Here's the sub wrapped:

And now unwrapped minus two bites:

I took two bites before I remembered I have a dumb blog and took a picture. Sorry. That is my usual order at Lambert's Rainbow Fruit: pastrami with provolone cheese, pickles, onions and mustard. POM, if you will. I feel like I haven't perfected my pastrami order.  Something else should go on it, but nothing sounds right. Lettuce and tomatoes I have tried and they just don't work well.

Lambert's Rainbow Fruit is famous for their giant salad bar. It is a really good salad bar, but I get too intimidated by make your own salad bars, especially the pay per pound variety. I always try to maximize my value. I think too much about weight for each item and end up with a weird assortment of meats, vegetables and cheeses and there always seem to be tortellini involved somehow.

So instead of the salad bar I get a sub at Lambert's Rainbow Fruit, and usually their pastrami which they make themselves. It's very good, they give you a lot of meat. There's a little too much fat on some pieces, but I pick the fat off and give to the dog. The dog also gets a few whole pastrami pieces to make it more manageable size-wise. The dog is usually a big fan of Lambert's Rainbow Fruit. When I ate this sub, she was sleeping on the couch and couldn't even be bothered to come beg and get the meat. So I walked over to her with the meat, put it right in front of her mouth and then she ate it and immediately went back to sleep. The dog has it pretty good.

Lambert's Rainbow Fruit is also unusual in that you pick your piece of bread, and hand it to the sandwich maker. So I really scout out all those sub rolls looking for the best shape and size. I'm like the Mel Kiper of sub roll drafts. All sandwiches are $6 too, which is pretty cheap and you don't have to worry about cheese surcharges and such.

Boston Super Dog

Boston Super/Speed Dog, hot dogs are not very photogenic

That is Warren Buffett's favorite hot dog. Formerly Boston Speed Dog, now called Boston Super Dog for some reason.

That picture doesn't do justice to how big the hot dog is. I was going to get a picture of Connor holding it for scale, but he was focused on crawling at some hipster's single-speed. But the bun is a big sub roll.

This was my second ever Super/Speed dog. The first was a couple years ago when Heather and I went to a food truck festival at SoWa Open Market on some Sunday. We biked there right when it started at like 9:30am to check it out. We had heard about the Super/Speed dog, but for some(many) reason(s) we are never in Roxbury at lunchtime on a weekday. At SoWa, we decided to try one. I do not recommend eating a giant hot dog at 9:30am, then biking 10 miles which we did. It is not a good feeling.

My second Super/Speed dog, pictured above, was at the Greenway Mobile Food Fest. This time we went around 5:30pm, and almost every truck was sold out of most everything. I first went to Silk Road BBQ. I got pork skewers with mediterranean salad and rice pilaf, which was all they had left. It was kind of boring, I didn't even take a picture of it. Not dumb blog worthy. Also, it took them 25 minutes to make it because the coals weren't hot at first. That's no good.

The Super/Speed dog has onions, mustard, barbecue sauce and chili on it. That is a loaded Super/Speed dog. The dog is grilled, and is cut down the middle. It is really good. Heather even likes it. So if you are ever in Roxbury at lunchtime on a weekday, get a Boston Super/Speed Dog.

Fenway Frank

"Hey, Jeff your blog is awesome, but what do you think of Fenway Franks?"- No One

Dear No One, I appreciate the message. By all accounts I should love Fenway Franks. I love hot dogs and I Iove the Red Sox.

But Fenway Franks are horrible hot dogs. If you have ever eaten any other hot dog before it was better than a Fenway Frank. The Sox should be embarrassed about their quality of dogs. They recently announced with great fanfare that they have improved the recipe. Well, take your fanfare and try again.

Yet every year I get one at my first Sox game. I add some onions and mustard, maybe some relish if I'm in the mood. The one above was when I had Monster seats the other day. It was bad.

But I also had my first ever burrito inside Fenway. Somehow I have never snuck a burrito inside, and never noticed a burrito vendor before. It was OK. The beer was good.

Bgood Burger of Death

We all went to bgood the other day. They make one of my favorite burgers, the El Guapo. That is what I got. When I order it, I add a second patty (only $.99 more!), and I also add cheese, because cheese is yummy. I take the second patty off and eat it as a side dish instead of fries. Bgood's thing is that their food is healthy. They use lean beef and bake their fries and stuff. My additions make the burger as unhealthy as possible. Here it is:

The El Guapo has lettuce, tomatoes, grilled jalapenos, and jalapeno ranch dressing.
So why is this post titled, "Bgood Burger of Death"? Well, I should say it was one of my favorite burgers.  That burger pictured above gave me food poisoning. I won't go into details, and thankfully I didn't take any pictures, but starting a couple hours after eating the burger, I had a very unpleasant evening. The only thing I ate before the burger was a Slurpee, and I doubt that caused it. Yup, I had a Slurpee for breakfast, you're jealous.

We also got some sweet potato fries. Connor helped us with them:

We tried to feed him some burger but he refused. Thank goodness, since I can't imagine a ten month old with food poisoning.

Taco Bell Doritos Locos Tacos

I love Doritos. I don't buy them because I will just eat the whole bag. So when I heard Taco Bell had a new Dorito shell taco, I was so excited I rushed there two months later.

This is what I got:

I felt like having chicken, so I placed my order:

Me: "Umh, can I have one of those Doritos things with chicken"

Cashier: "Sure"

Manager (from the back): "That's one dollar extra!"

Me: "That's fine, I can swing it."

So I got the taco. It was $2.40. That's a big premium percentage for chicken. I took two bites and the thing disintegrated into a pile. I tasted no Doritos flavoring. I ended up throwing half of the taco away.

In other words, I was very disappointed.  The name of it is stupid too. I wish I had got a Meximelt instead. That's the best thing at Taco Bell.

Jeff's First Filet-o-Fish

Hi. I'm Jeff. I had my first Filet-o-Fish(FoF) on March 25th 2012 at the age of 36. I am a fast food enthusiast, so after eating it I decided to start the world's dumbest blog and share my thoughts.

Why hadn't you had a FoF before then? Wait, who are you all of a sudden asking me questions? You have a lot of nerve, but I guess I will answer them. Well I used to really hate seafood. Over the last 15 years I have started eating some seafood. I usually don't like it, so I hardly ever order fish in restaurants. My wife orders fish a lot, so I usually try her dish. Now my opinions of seafood are:

• Shrimp, I like a lot and do order sometimes.
• Mild white fishes are OK, so I thought a FoF might be good.
• Sushi I like, or should I say I like maki rolls. So I often eat some rolls with weird seafood I usually wouldn't want to eat.

Anyway, I was at McDonald's buying my dog a McDouble and they had a special, $3.33 for a FoF and a medium fry. I was going to get a fry for myself anyway, so I splurged and got a FoF too.

Wait, you were buying your dog a McDouble? Uh, yes, I just said that. I have the world's best dog. This is Suzy:

She hardly ever gets non-dog food. One exception is every year on her birthday, she gets a McDouble. Guess when her birthday is? You're good, it's March 25th. She turned 10 this year. Here she is eating the McDouble:

OK. But the suspense is killing me, what did you think of the FoF? Hey, calm down, I'm getting there.

First, here's the FoF I ate:

I was not impressed with the appearance.

Here's my thoughts:

• So it is fried, has tartar sauce AND cheese? Way to keep it healthy McD's.
• No, really I don't think the cheese is necessary, and I love cheese.
• First bite: It was way fishier than I thought it would be. I didn't think it was very good. I didn't taste any cheese
• I realized I didn't get any of the tartar sauce also.
• Second bite: I got some tartar sauce. It masks a lot of the fishiness. Better. Still no cheese taste.
• Still not good.
• I had one more bite, then gave the rest to my wife. Her thought was "They tasted better when I was a kid."

So I guess my final thought on it was it was alright, but as unhealthy as it is, I would much rather have something else. In other words, I was jealous of my dog's food. To improve it, I would add some cole slaw instead of the cheese.