Food for Thought

I'm very particular about food. Not in the way of, say, sending a steak back to the kitchen if it's a smidge over medium or something. There are just some things I will only eat a certain way. I will only eat a burger if it's a cheeseburger. I don't like omelettes with too much egg in them. As a rule I don't like egg yolk, but I do like deviled eggs. I only like pasta with pesto, not red sauce. If I have a taco or burrito, it has to have just the right fillings. And this is where the story begins.

Tonight I ordered a burrito from this Mexican place called Jose's. I've ordered delivery from there via GrubHub a few times now with great success. I took a chance on what they call a Super Burrito because by default it comes packed with all the stuff I need in a burrito: guacamole, cheese, sour cream, salsa, in addition to the usual rice and beans and meat. It sounded grand, and at $16 it was certainly a risk, but it turned out to be a huge win. Loved that thing. I ate the shit out of it. It's now my go-to thing when I'm craving Mexican and can't go somewhere.

I get my super burrito tonight, and it was decidedly not super. I took my first bite and got all meat and beans and rice. I thought, Alright, no big. Sometimes the good stuff is a little further down. I kept trying to convince myself with every bite that I was about to get some guacamole, that it just slipped down or something. Not the case. I finally gave up and realized that nope, there was no secret stash of condiment goodness in my burrito. It had simply been prepared poorly. And by poorly, I mean they'd just plain forgotten to put everything on it.

This is where my food particularity comes into play. There are people (like my wife) who could shrug and say, "Well, it's still tasty and I paid for it" and keep eating. Others would have called and bitched someone out to get a replacement. I stopped eating it. I just can't make myself eat something that is less than I want, especially if I've had it before so I have an expectation about what I should be getting. It also made me more than a little annoyed. This wasn't like some special order, where I'd added things to a basic menu item. This happens to me sometimes when I order, say, eggs, and ask them to add cheese. Sometimes the cheese just doesn't make it onto the eggs, and I kind've get that. This however was a regular menu item. It always comes with these things, so for it not to have a single one of these things on it means that someone was just not paying attention. To add insult to injury, they also neglected to include the tortillas that were supposed to come with my queso fundido—again, another standard menu item.

The bright side is that GrubHub is pretty awesome. I went back to my order and filled out a comment about it, and maybe 20-30 minutes later got a text from them asking if I wanted them to try and get a refund or give me a credit. I opted for the credit because I figured it'd be much harder for them to get a refund. Mind you, they credited $15 to my account for an order that was $36 all told, but it was something. More than I would have gotten had I called Jose's directly. This may be the end of my love affair with Jose's Super Burrito though.