| Belmont's belly busting burritos |
Reviewer: Jason
Total Reviews: 1020
Reviewed: 4/28/2007
Rating: 9
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Thanks to Kurt from Oracle for sending me this burrito powerhouse. Let's start with finding Taqueria El Metate. Probably the easiest way to locating this restaurant is approach it from 101 North and exit Ralston towards Belmont. You'll follow it towards Harbor Blvd exit. Once you exit, Taqueria El Metate is immediately to the right side. You have to be careful because people are flying off the exit behind you. Parking will be tough during lunchtime and if you park across the street, watch out for speeding cars.
On my 1st visit, I had the regular pollo asado burrito with guac, a soda, and free chips ($6.66). I arrived during the frying of tortilla chips and greeted to hot chips. Their salsa bar offers 4 different types of salsa, pickled peppers/carrots, limes, and radishes. My favorite salsa is pictured in the bottom left of picture 5. It's a tomato sauce salsa you normally see in sit down mexican restaurants. Wonderful stuff.
Take a table and the food will be delivered to you. Their "regular" burrito is one of the largest I've had. When I say the largest regular burrito, I'm comparing to 100s of other taquerias I've visited. This one is huge and major props to people that can finish in 1 sitting. Normally, when restaurants serve huge portions, it's done to hide their sub-par food. I was skeptical, how would Taqueria El Metate do?
The burrito is served wet with an orange color salsa. The sauce isn't hot/spicy but more for flavoring, kinda tangy and peppery. The tortilla looked awesome with the grill marks and slight crackling. The burrito is far too large and messy to eat with your hands, you'll have to use the fork and knife. The interior contains firm pinto beans, rice, onions, cilantro, pico, guac, and loads up loads of grilled chicken.
tortilla - awesome, the grilling puts it over the top
insides - excellent, no complaints, only praise
pollo asado - if you know my feelings for Taqueria La Bamba's Pollo Asado, I hold it as the best. El Metate has second guessing which is better now, it's that GOOD. Large portions of chicken throughout the burrito.
El Metate's burrito is huge and could only finish half. I used the other half for another meal 5 hours later. Based on my 1st visit, it's a 9.5.
Giving a 9.5 for a taqueria isn't an easy thing to just do. Jatbar hold 9.5s in a special place so to make sure, I did another visit 1 week later. I wanted to badly get the Pollo Asado again but went with the Chile Verde burrito. The burrito was large again and you can see the tortilla was starting to split in image 9. The tortilla lacked the grilling I had on my 1st visit. The beans, rice, onions, salsa, that was all good and everything but the verde sauce was lacking. The verde had an overwhelming vinegar taste and pork contained a lot of fat chunks. The chili verde doesn't even compare to my Pollo Asado experience.
I'll make more visits as the months go on. For the taste and portion size, I think Taqueria El Metate is one of the best between Mountain View and San Mateo. Combining the 1st and 2nd visits, I'm rounding out to a 9.
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Reviewer: Dan
Total Reviews: 81
Reviewed: 10/18/2007
Rating: 8
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A visit to El Metate was a no-brainer to try when I saw Jason's score of 9. I stopped by at peak lunch hour on a Friday and had some time on my hands, so I planned to eat in. The place was very busy and the line was about 10 people deep. No problem right? Uh wrong. This was one of the slowest lines I have been in. I couldn't figure out why. The only thing I could see was the cashier seemed to be multi-tasking heavily (taking phone orders, making change, etc.) I'm hoping this was just an anomaly. It took me a full ten minutes to get to the front of the line. I ordered the two taco plate with one carnitas and one carne asada taco. Total cost was $7.85. Pretty high, but I've been spoiled. Then I visited the chip bar and loaded up. It was very clean and well-stocked with fresh chips...Mmmm, great happiness. I grabbed some of the guacamole style salsa and sat down.
Chips – homemade, nice and fresh. The only thing they lacked was salt, but I sprinkled them lightly and this solved the problem. Salsa – very good with a nice kick. Not quite as addicting as the Tres Potrillos equivalent.
My food arrived in about 5 minutes and contained two tacos, salad, beans and rice. The rice was pretty good, fluffy and flavorful. The beans were damn good, above average, tasting very homemade.
The carnitas taco – meat was of the shredded pork variety. Not crispy but flavorful and quite good. Topped with cilantro, onions and nice salsa. And good sized. An 8.5 for this taco.
The carne asada taco – what a disappointment. Overly chewy meat with very little flavor. Definitely below par. Same toppings as the other. I rate this a 6.5 and won't get it again. Score so far 7.5
On my next visit I took my daughters on a Saturday after ice skating. The place was not very busy and I was able to order quickly. My girls each had a chicken taco plate and I had to try the regular pollo asado chicken burrito (wet) that Jason raved about. We loaded up on chips as we waited – Yum. Our food was delivered to the table. Jason did not lie – my burrito was freakin' huge! I cut it in half and began to eat. The appearance was not as nice as Jason's picture since there were no grill marks visible. I had also failed to get guacamole and was lamenting this decision since the inside was a little on the dry side. The burrito came with whole pinto beans, salsa, rice, onions and cilantro. The sauce on the outside reminded me of mild enchilada sauce. This sauce was a little low on flavor and hard to taste. I prefer the green chile sauce offered by Taqueria Los Charros and Tres Potrillos. My burrito was excellent, but it didn't blow me away. The price for this burrito was $5.70, on the high end, but not terrible considering the behemoth delivered to my table.
My daughters just picked at their tacos, and I suspect they just weren't as hungry as they had claimed. They had simmered chicken (pollo cocido) tacos and I gave this meat a try. It was very moist and flavorful, so good I was wishing I had this on my burrito instead of the grilled chicken. Their beans and rice were awesome too. You can be sure I packed up their unfinished lunches to go so we could snack on these later. 8.5 for this visit. 8.0 average score for both visits.
Pros: chips/salsa bar included with homemade chips; monster burritos
Cons: Line can be slow at peak lunch hour; carne asada is lacking; prices on the high side for a taqueria |
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