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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Year of Eating Differently (13): Wrapid, Berwick Street

I only noticed this one appear since the project started, and it seemed as good a day as any to try it out. Apart from the awful pun of the name, not so bad: lots of different things, in wraps. Bangers & mash through to vegetarian balti. The balti itself is pretty good - very spicy and strong flavour, but the wrap itself leaves a little to be desired. Instead of being something soft and pancake like, it looks like some combination of cardboard and wholemeal something; maybe it had been festering on the grills for too long, but I don't want a wrap which is actually baked hard.

They gave me a loyalty card - I was going to be cruel and ask "what do I want that for? I'm not coming back, you know" but if this quest ends in failure before the 365 days are up, then I think I'd be happy to have something else here.
Cheap, too: 4.05 for the wrap, 90p for a piece of caramel shortcake with 29 different ingredients. Mmm, hydrogenated vegetable oil. Should have gone to Just Felafs for dessert...