Year of Eating Differently (64): Mexicali, Berwick Street

After the last two days (expense account lunch and a trip on a Pullman train to Salisbury and back, that commenced with bellinis at 10am and didn't stop putting booze down me until 8 that evening) it was probably time to dry out. However, wandering today in search of a working Sony Ericsson K850i (it broke, it got fixed, it broke again) I was having trouble finding anything new. Plus the peril of booze and everything else meant I was beginning to resemble Shockheaded Peter, and really, that's not a good look, y'all.
Luckily, I chanced on Mexicali. First thought was that I'd get annoyed by its slightly gauche 'healthy eating' vibe - but I made the same mistake at Pure California, and so it came to pass.
Queuing system is pretty awful. Because of the very long bar behind which all the prep gets done, there's very little space by the front door, and therefore the queue builds up very haphazardly while four Americans struggle to understand the orlriiight geezer behind the till. Having navigated through that, ordered a vegetable burrito with guacamole and then wandered the odd hundred yards to the other end, where the food was very quickly and competently delivered.
It's embarassing, seeing how small the food is in some joints, how big the portion was at Mexicali - an absolutely huge burrito and some plainly awful tortilla chips, most of which I had to chuck in the bin afterwards. The burrito itself was great; spicy enough to be interesting without leaving me turning flame-red at my desk and scrabbling for a pint of milk. And very filling. Made the mistake of picking up some chocolate covered shortbread at the same time - thought it was a flapjack, it wasn't. Word to the wise: shortbread is for your granny, it's not for your lunch.


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