Most days I bring lunch to work. I would rather brutally stub my toe than spend 12 dollars on Sweetgreen, and I make a convincing eggplant parm. There are times, though, when I don’t feel like making lunch. It as at these moments when I check Snackpass for discounts and get absolutely reckless.
I chose Zambrero because burritos were 50 percent off, so each one cost under four dollars. If you are unfamiliar with American currency or are appalled by current levels of inflation after waking from a 40-year coma, I ensure you that isn’t very much money. It is in fact so little money that I overlooked many reviews that claimed the food and service were poor, and that it was foolish to install another fast-casual burrito option where there are several more entrenched, cheaper, and tastier options.
Snackpass is simple. You order food, the restaurant tells you it’s ready, and you pick it up. At Felipe’s, my usual burrito spot, this takes about eight minutes. Thirty minutes after ordering from Zambrero, my burrito was still unaccounted for. Knowing that it is not very hard to make a burrito when you are a restaurant that sells almost exclusively burritos, I walked over anyway. When I was two minutes away, I got a notification that my food was ready.
I figured Zambrero would be crowded because of the discount, which would have explained the wait. But when I arrived, there were only a couple of people eating. It was lunch time, so this wasn’t a good sign.
I am not a burrito connoisseur. I have written two rave reviews of Chipotle, which probably says more about me than anything else I have ever done or will ever do. The only time Chipotle disappoints me is when they accidentally poison someone and a crucial ingredient is stricken from the menu. That being said, this burrito was especially mediocre. It tasted like two underwhelming and conflicting burritos merged into one. I am inclined to blame myself for the ingredient choice, but picking burrito ingredients is one of my greatest skills.
By the time I knew a review would be necessary, I had almost finished my burrito. 
This is how a Zambrero burrito is supposed to look, but it doesn’t really look great here either.
Though absorbed by a basketball podcast, I eventually noticed a line building up behind me. When I checked a few minutes later, the line had grown. This was strange because no more people were eating food than when I had arrived. Everyone just entered, got in line, and stood there.
At most restaurants, it is reasonable to expect that someone will serve you food. Wait times vary, but the general concept is that if you have money and a desire to spend it, someone will allow you to do so in exchange for food. That is how capitalism works.
Zambrero challenges the “ordering and receiving food” narrative. It was the opposite ordering experience of Chipotle, where, if you do not pick a salsa quickly enough, you are slapped with a steaming tortilla. At Zambrero, every person in line had a long, visibly puzzling conversation with the restaurant’s only employee. At first I thought they might have been out of a popular ingredient, but the exchanges were much longer and much more filled with confusion for that to be the only thing wrong.
As I looked at the faces of the people who had waited for at least ten minutes, I expected to see expressions of dismay or at least slight incredulity, but everyone was just blankly staring at their phones. It was at this moment I realized what we had in common: an ambivalence for quality of food, service, or really anything else one would expect from a place that pays rent through food sales. If you like eating, you should not go to Zambrero. I will never go again, unless there is another 50-percent discount. Then I will consider it, but probably end up not going.
Zambrero: 4.7/10
