Here's the biggest mistake Chipotle makes with its burritos

People love burritos. I love burritos. Who doesn't love burritos? In the US, that love mostly means Chipotle.

But here in New York City, there are dozens of burrito spots that are as good as — and often far better than — Chipotle. I'm not talking about fancy restaurants with Michelin stars.

I'm talking about places that do exactly the same thing that Chipotle does — fast meals at slightly-higher-than-fast-food prices — but much better than Chipotle. So-called fast-casual restaurants.

Eating at these burrito spots, you realize pretty quickly that Chipotle consistently makes the same mistake: treating the tortilla as a dump for food instead of a canvas for carefully laid out ingredients.

Put simply, Chipotle treats its bowls and its burritos identically, dumping ingredients into a pile in the center.

This results in an inconsistent, sloppy burrito-eating experience where one bite is all rice, another all beans, and a third results in something else entirely. Every bite is a surprise, and that's not a good thing. But what makes burritos so good is their combination of several delicious ingredients, all in one bite.

It's a disservice to customers and ingredients alike to put such little effort into the burrito-crafting process.

Thankfully, a local burrito shop named Dos Toros— 10 are scattered across Manhattan and Brooklyn — does things right. Having eaten there a few hundred times across the past several years, I can attest: Dos Toros makes a mean burrito. It's the closest I've come to a California-style burrito in NYC.

Most importantly, it's a well prepared burrito instead of a slop of ingredients forced into a burrito-shaped object.

Here, look at this:

It may sound like quibbling, but this one small change makes all the difference in the world in crafting a delicious, perfectly balanced burrito. 

Places like Dos Toros share a lot of similarities with Chipotle. A bunch of prepared ingredients are in a hot/cold prep area, waiting to be assembled.

Even the order of ingredient application is near identical. Like Chipotle, Dos Toros starts with rice and beans. But the similarities end there — look at how these beans and rice are laid out:

The rest of the ingredients are laid out in a similarly linear fashion. In this case, a generous portion of succulent, luscious carnitas is laid gingerly over the carefully placed foundation of rice and beans.