Born in the Mission, Built by Immigrants: The Burrito That Became a Bay Area Icon

This story was reported for K Onda KQED, a monthly newsletter focused on the Bay Area’s Latinx community. Click here to subscribe.

On a recent afternoon, my mouth began to water as I placed a to-go order for a lengua burrito at Taqueria San Jose near the 24th Street BART Station in San Francisco.

I was already hungry when the cashier handed me my order of three burritos, which I planned to eat once I arrived home in Concord. I would have to wait an hour to unwrap the foil and pour salsa on each bite.

But as usual, my Mission-style burrito was worth the wait — a simple but satisfying punch of perfectly cooked ingredients, rolled into cylindrical tortilla greatness that is as portable as it is palatable.

In the past few weeks, I’ve spent more time musing on Bay Area burritos than I have in the 20-some years I’ve lived in this region. I didn’t feel the need to overthink why I enjoy burritos. I just did.

On May 29, I hosted an event for KQED Live called Burrito Showdown that brought together three generations of Mission burriteurs (yes, I made that up).

The morning after the showdown, I followed up by producing a Forum segment on why the burrito remains a culinary icon in the Bay Area.

Hosting the live event and producing a Forum show centering the influence of Mission-style burritos gave me a deeper appreciation for the amazing success of the Mission-style burrito — and what they represent, not just for the Bay Area, but for how culture transforms and is shared.

What I love about burritos is that they shine in both their simplest and most complex forms. The standard bean and cheese variety can earn a Michelin nod.

The showdown featured Miguel Jara of La Taqueria, who’s been in business more than 50 years and was a pioneer in the Mission; Victor Escobedo, who started Papalote Mexican Grill 25 years ago; and Ricardo Lopez, owner of La Vaca Birria, a restaurant that’s been in business for a couple of years.

Jara was one of the original purveyors of what became known as the Mission-style burrito. Born in Jalisco and raised in Tijuana, he ran a body shop in San Francisco. He decided to pivot into restaurants because he missed the kind of street food he was used to in Mexico.

“I didn’t work in a restaurant. My dad asked me if I knew how to cook beans, and I said, ‘No, but I know how to eat them,’” he said.

He spent a year developing the space and menu for La Taqueria at 2889 Mission St. When it opened, there were only a handful of taquerias in the Mission, including the La Cumbre near Valencia and 16th streets and El Faro, a taqueria often credited as the originator of the Mission-style burrito.

Jara said he doesn’t know how the term Mission-style took hold. But he does know his restaurant has thrived and has had influence across the United States and worldwide.

“A friend of mine went over to New York to visit his daughter, and they took him to a restaurant, and on the wall, they had a picture of my restaurant,” he said.

Cesar Hernandez, restaurant critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, told me there are various creation myths about where the burrito came from, but no certified history. Flour tortillas come from northern Mexican states, and a burrito refers to a taco in which the tortilla is folded on its sides to create a self-contained vessel, making it more portable and less messy to eat than a taco.

Lopez’s foray into the restaurant industry started when he was 15 with a part-time job to earn extra cash. He went on to operate a food truck before opening La Vaca Birria, basing his signature birria on his grandfather’s recipe.

La Vaca Birria went viral last year for its $22 burritos, but the expensive burrito on the menu, featuring New York steak, costs $32. Lopez said he uses standard restaurant calculations based on the cost of ingredients and overhead — he’s not charging ridiculous prices for the fun of it. Pricing is, of course, relative.

While I waited for my burrito order at Taqueria San Jose, I perused a large mural of a plaza in the Mexican town of Tepatitlán in Jalisco. These murals may seem like generic taqueria decor, but if you look closely, you will see unique details about the artist or the town they depict.

The murals remind me of my parents’ hometown, Huejuquilla el Alto, Jalisco, that, like hundreds or probably thousands of towns in Mexico, has a central plaza anchored by an ornate church facing a square park with a picturesque kiosk in the center.

The familiar scenes depicted on the walls of taquerias always pique my interest. They pay homage to specific places in Mexico. The people working behind the counter are all Mexican. A taqueria is a Mexican restaurant, but the Mission-style burrito is an American-born offshoot.

It reminds me of kitchy T-shirts and keychains I’ve seen that read, “Made in the USA with Mexican parts” — a joke for people like me, a child of Mexican immigrants. It’s true that the Mission-style burrito does not exist in Mexico. If you find one there, it is an explicit take on the California burrito.

What this shows is how culture is a living, organic process borrowing from influences regardless of borders.

Papalote does not have any murals inside its compact eatery on 24th Street near the intersection with Valencia Street. That’s on purpose, Escobedo said. A papalote is a “kite” in Mexican Spanish, a term that comes from the Nahuatl word for butterfly. I love the symbolism of using an indigenous word from Mexico to name a restaurant in San Francisco that specializes in an Americanized take on Mexican food.

Escobedo, Papalote’s owner, said the burrito is a better representation of American multiculturalism than the worn-out melting pot metaphor.

“The melting pot demands that whoever comes in has to blend in. You have to stop being who you are, and you have to be just like everyone else. A burrito is individual items that stay exactly who they are,” he said. The burrito “is a vessel that really unites all of us … And it’s really tasty and terrific.”