It's hard to find decent Mexican food in Canada. We're lousy with Taco Bells and, out west at least, we've got Taco Time. But these are just chains offering a cartoon version of the real deal. The first time I went for burritos with friends in San Fransisco's Mission District, I damn near cried.
The food was so good, I regret having not hired a poet to capture the emotion surrounding my meal. I've spent the past three months in Texas' Rio Grande Valley. Same deal: the Mexican cuisine here is phenomenal. Hell the gas station down the street from me serves up fresh carnitas. It tastes like heaven. Back home in Alberta, gas station food tastes like death. I love Mexican cuisine! The thought of returning to Canada, with its sub-par joke tacos, fills me with ennui.
So, when I read how cops in Los Angeles discovered that criminals were moving crystal meth through the city disguised as burritos, I took it kind of hard.
According to The LA Times, two LA patrol officers were conducting a routine traffic stop when they discovered the occupants of the vehicle they'd pulled over were packing 14 beefy-looking, tinfoil wrapped burritos. The burritos turned out to be jammed full of around 25 pounds of methamphetamine. Obviously, arrests were made, but the thing that bothers me is this: while they got the drugs and a handgun off the street, no body even mentioned the fact that they'd desecrated those burritos. I just don't get it: in a world so bereft of decent Mexican food, doesn't anyone care about the damn burritos?
Los Angeles needs to check its burrito privilege.
Image courtesy of Wikipedia Commons
