Stop #6 on the Burrito Blow Out took us to St. Stephen's Green shopping centre, to test this new addition to Dublin's burrito scene. It is set up as a sort of food kiosk on the 1st floor of the shopping centre, around the corner from the escalator, and has a seating area on the balcony over the food court.
I ordered a beef burrito with the spiciest salsa available and made my way upstairs. There, we were welcomed by the owner of the place and the head chef, who served us a choice of beers to test with our burritos. I sat down with a cup of Negra Modelo and started on my burrito. It was good. Juicy meat, nice mix of ingredients, nothing wrong with it. Unfortunately, I had to have my guacamole inside the burrito rather than in a cup on the side as no cups were available.
While working through my burrito, and 3 further types of beer, we were served additional snacks: the chef was busy developing the menu and had come up with quesedillas filled with chorizo and cheese, topped with a yoghurt based sauce. They were delicious and all the platters were gone in no time. I wasn't going to bring up my 'this sauce is not spicey at all' pet peeve in this review, but during our review session, I noticed that pretty much everybody remarked that it had no kick to it whatsoever. Ah.. so it's not just me. Salsa lacks kick- note that, people.
Towards the end of the meeting, the chef gave a salsa-making demo and the owner did a little presentation about El Gringo now and for the future. He explained that they now had the 1 outlet (the one we were sitting in now) and planned to expand to 5 outlets in the Dublin area by Easter and about 15 units around the country by the end of the year. And in order to ensure consistency, he planned to set up a central kitchen where all the food would be produced and then distributed to the outlets.
Does any of this sound familiar to you? Centrally prepared food. Aggressive expansion strategy. Be present everywhere. Yes, they are aiming to set up a Subway for burritos. This is not necessarily a bad thing. I like Subway. The good thing about Subway is that it is affordable, nice and it is the same wherever you go. It's not the most exciting sandwich in the world, but it is a good and consistent product the world over.
And that is, in the end, the feeling I got from El Gringo. The food is good, no doubt about that. But the owners have a bunch of other restaurant businesses and are clearly trying to jump on the burrito bandwagon, just like nearly every pub in Dublin is all of a sudden presenting itself as 'craft beer specialists'.
Will I go to El Gringo more often? If at some point I find myself in, say, Galway and craving a burrito, I might head for one of their outlets. While I'm in Dublin, I'm sticking with the independent places. Good, but not Great. read more