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Comment by shkkmo | Hacker News Reader

Burritos are highly regional and come in many different forms. There is no *one true burrito" and anybody to tries to argue there is is trying to elevate one region's definition over the others.

Arguably, tostadas are defined more by the form of the flat, crispy torilla than by what you out on top of it.

Beans and/or rice presence in a burrito is a regional distinction. Personally, I don't like the all meat burritos that are standard in many areas.

And once you travel beyond mexico you will realize there is a whole range of food that overlaps with those categories. Is a baleada a burrito, a taco, or it's own separate thing?

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> Burritos are highly regional and come in many different forms. There is no *one true burrito" and anybody to tries to argue there is is trying to elevate one region's definition over the others.

You're not kidding, I'm from SoCal and we have the largest Mexican population due to proximity and I grew up going to Baja for cheap weekends with my family and got to eat lots of Mexican food--it wasn't really my thing, and I do not like corn in general, but once in a while was fine.

So, I thought I had a solid idea of what Mexican food was, and being from SoCal it's not uncommon to see things like fries inside of a burrito as the most 'white-people' option, which oddly I'm a fan of especially hashbrowns.

Then I moved to Colorado and realized that what I had been eating was strictly localized to the Pacific side of Mexico, all the stuff I saw that was called Mexican was like nothing I had ever seen before. Recently I went back after leaving Boulder and I ordered a burrito not thinking much about it when I visited a friend and he chose a spot nearby to meet up for drinks. I totally forgot that the Mexican population in Colorado is mainly from the border with Texas and some from the Gulf area so what came back was this monster drenched in sauce.

I asked if they messed up my order, but he said that all burritos come like that unless specified otherwise, which apparently is quite common in the Mid-west--this is contentious but I think CO is definitely the mid-west and it's culture reflects that as I mainly lived in SoCal, Colorado and Hawaii when I've lived in the US.

Honestly, it was like a big enchilada, which I could only stomach 1/2 of as it was way too much for my palette.

I think a gyros and kabab resembles a burrito the most to anything else, both which I enjoy way more as their is a greater emphasis on lots of pickled things with intriguing sauces--a garlic-heavy tzatziki makes everything taste better.

But honestly the thing is it's a staple found in just about any culture and cuisine: meat and veg wrapped in wheat based outer layer.

A “wrap” is the generic term for food wrapped in something vaguely large-tortilla-like. Just because people somewhere call something a burrito doesn’t make it true.

You are just flat wrong here. The world clearly agrees that burritos can have beans and pizza can have pineapples. If you try to limit the meaning of "burrito" you are simply not accurately conveying what the word means. In addition "traditional burritos" have long included a wide variety of ingredients, including beans, though usually not with as many ingredients per burrito as a "mission burrito".

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