Let me tell you about the worst meal of my life.
I, a socal native, was wandering through Edinburgh. For reasons too complicated to explain here, I had not eaten or slept in roughly 24 hours. I was exhausted, maddeningly hungry, and hungover. I wanted something that tasted like home. There was a burrito place.
It was a standard store layout, the line of cooks waiting to assemble the burrito step by step, little troughs of ingredients laid out before me. In a land of unfamiliar, alien cuisine like Greggs and Pret A Manger, I was finally in familiar territory. I understood this.
One steak burrito please.
I watch this poor Scottish woman grab a cold flour tortilla from a plastic bag. It is so stale it clicks as it hits the counter. She drops a tongful of cubed carne asada into the center. It bounces.
My choice of beans was the first thing to throw me. No black. No refried. My choices were white, kidney and large. I went for white.
The rice was visibly undercooked. The cheese was certainly not Oaxaca, but let's be fair, even a lot of American taquerias don't use Oaxaca. I just needed something white and reasonably melty, and I trust the Scots when it comes to cheese. Things were odd but going steady. I was going to get my burrito.
But then, dear reader, this woman dips a ladle into the thinnest, wateriest, greyest looking guacamole I have ever seen. There are chunks of raw avocado floating in what appears to be cucumber water. I initially mistook it for a ceviche or unusually chunky salsa. And this woman really lays it on. She soaks my burrito like some kind of avocado based baptism mishap. All I can do is sit and watch as a puddle of greenish sweat forms under the tortilla. The ship was sinking. I needed to get out now while there was still time.
I have nothing but empathy for this cook. None of this was her fault. I watch in placid horror as she attempts to fold Davvy Jones tortilla into working order. The tortilla is so stale it is audibly crackling as it splits and creaks. Beans and cheese gush from a crack in the starboard side. Another break. Another. But all is not lost. An enterprising coworker swoops in with a second tortilla, staunching the wound. A layer of foil reinforces the patch. Total repair cost is about fifteen pounds.
I sit. I unwrap. I am deliriously hungry. I take a bite without looking.
A bog body of a tortilla. Cold in some places, soggy in others, mysteriously sticky in yet others. Rubbery carne asada haunted by the memory of the ghost of cumin. Rice so undercooked it was biting me back. Beans so underdone they're writing on my teeth like chalk on a blackboard. Everything is fucking wet. There is a smell, but no discernable taste of avocado. Cheese was fine.
There was no lime anywhere. I asked.
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