My Chipotle, Your Chipotle — matt beckwith dot com

There’s a meme that my friends say describes me well.

“Chipotle is my life!”

Yes, that one. And yes, it does. It speaks to every fiber of my being.

To say that I am a Chipotle fan is putting it mildly (as mild as their Tomatillo salsa!). I’m not sure I would call myself a fanatic, although I know that others have labeled me as such. I just love the food at Chipotle. At least once a week over the past decade I have eaten Chipotle. (A quick check of my credit card transactions over the last two years shows that number is closer to 1.3 times per week) There is not another food from outside of my home that I have loved for anywhere near as long.

I love that their food looks like actual food. I love that it has always been a great value, even as prices have gone up. And I love that they have basically written the textbook on taking the effort out of ordering my food for pickup (does anyone else remember the Burrito Button on the Apple Watch!?). I love that the employees are almost always friendly. I love that their iced tea is always amazing. I'm not the only that knows this... icedtealover.com named it the best iced tea of 2020. And I'm pretty sure I would quit my Chipotle habit if they ever stopped making great iced tea!

Chipotle shirt, chicken, brown rice, pinto beans, mild, hot, and lettuce

My order has changed very little through the years. I no longer get the corn and I now prefer brown rice over white. But the biggest change only happened in the last year or so: I finally love guacamole! Yes, I am a true Californian but never liked guacamole or anything with avocados until recently. I’ve always wanted to like guac, so every now and again I would try it… and the familiarity principle kicked in because now I can’t imagine having Chipotle without the guac!

I’ve always known that there were other people that enjoyed Chipotle as much as I did, but never really gave much thought to what they ordered. Pre-pandemic, I even went to Chipotle every week with one of my co-workers. But then, one day, I was talking to a friend about Chipotle and he told me what he orders. I was in absolute shock! I just couldn’t imagine how “his Chipotle” would taste. It was so very different than mine. Except for the fact that it came in a tortilla, I don’t think it could have been any more different than my order. That’s when I realized that, for those of us that order the same thing every time, Chipotle has a very distinct taste, distinct flavor, and distinct feel. After that, I started ordering my friends' go-to Chipotle order.

During most of 2020 and 2021 while I couldn’t always sit down and enjoy Chipotle with friends, I could at least sit down and enjoy THEIR Chipotle.

I have always loved burritos... and until this experiment, I had never even considered ordering a bowl. As an aside, can we all please agree to stop calling it a “burrito bowl”. The wrapper, the packaging, is what makes a burrito a burrito… if it’s in a bowl, it’s just a bowl. Ok, maybe I'm the only one with strong feelings about that. I still, pretty much, always stick to my same order, even if I change it up a bit and get my regular order in a bowl. But since ordering my friends' Chipotle, I have found that I am more experimental and will occasionally go wild with light sour cream or cheese. Or even completely wild with both beans!

Here are some of my favorite recent orders (and one that I'm sure I'll never order again):