Cheesy, Spicy Burrito and a Chawberry Milk

This wasn’t just a meal that would never be found in a restaurant, it was an entire experience that you couldn’t pay to replicate.

Some people walk into a restaurant that they frequent, and they say, “I’ll have the usual, please.” Others don’t even have to ask for it, the staff just knows. My friends and I never called these meals “the usual” but they sure as hell were. We graced our taste buds with the presence of this particular meal at least three days a week.

I lived in the dead center of my street. My friend Dave lived in the last house on one end of the street, and the last house at the other end of the street, technically on the corner of the intersecting street, was my friend Josh. When the bus dropped us off after school when we were between the ages of 9 and 12, it was in the middle of the street, close to my house. Because of this, our after-school hangout sessions usually occurred at my place… but it was also because I always had the goods.

“Table for three? Good. Smoking or non-smoking, gentlemen? Oh, you’re all not even teenagers? Excellent. Perhaps the best question is, video games or non-video-games? Yes, just as I expected.”

The usual table was down in the family room, and it wasn’t so much a table as it was a spot on the carpet in front of the TV and the Nintendo 64. But before we set up there, we had to prepare our own food in the kitchen. Yeah, you didn’t get that experience in many restaurants.

The Lunch Menu and Dinner Menu had many similar items, and there were plenty of great options that we alternated between, but the best one was the Cheesy Spicy Burrito.

Step 1 - Open the freezer and pull out three of the single Red Hot Burritos. Put 92 seconds on the microwave (102 if you wanted it to be extra spicy, because when I was at that age, I thought the longer it was heated up, the spicier it got), pop the burrito in, and let it heat up.

Step 2 - Once halfway through its cook time, so at 46 seconds (or 51 seconds), open the microwave door, and flip that sumbitch over to the other side. We have to cook it evenly. (The times may seem odd, but I had it in my head that I knew better than the company making the burrito. They said 90 seconds was sufficient, but I always KNEW that it needed a tiny bit extra lovin' in the microwave. The deliciousness was in the details.)

Step 3A - Once that cook time is done, slap a piece of American Cheese on that sucker, and put another 30 seconds on the microwave.

Step 3B - Depending on how cheesy you want your burrito to be, you may open the microwave at 15 seconds and sprinkle some parmesan cheese on top and then let it cook for the remaining 15 seconds.

You now have, either a Cheesy Spicy Burrito, or a Double Cheesy Spicy Burrito. While someone was working the microwave, likely Steve because his fingers worked the buttons with a magnificence usually reserved for surgeons and precision sewing professionals, someone else was on the drinks. 

Earlier, the waiter had asked, “What’s to drink, gentlemen? May I suggest either our Chawberry Milk or Strawcolate Milk?”

Step 4 - Josh and Dave usually worked in tandem, one was on chocolate syrup duties and the other was on strawberry syrup duties. I was always a fan of Chawberry Milk, which was…
Step 4AA - Pour Milk into a glass.
Step 4AB - Squirt 6 seconds of chocolate syrup into the glass.
Step 4AC - Squirt 3 seconds of strawberry syrup into the glass.
Step 4AD - Stir until a light brown color.
Dave and Josh would alternate with their flavors, and when they went with Strawcolate Milk, it went like…
Step 4BA - Pour Milk into a glass.
Step 4BB - Squirt 6 seconds of strawberry syrup into the glass.
Step 4AC - Squirt 3 seconds of chocolate syrup into the glass.
Step 4AD - Stir until a dark purple color.

Step 5 - Repeat until everyone’s Cheesy Spicy Burritos or Double Cheesy Spicy Burritos are done along with their Chawberry Milks or Strawcolate Milks.

Step 6 - Head down to the family room, and fire up the N64. Different wine grapes have been known to pair well with different meals. Similarly, the games that paired best with this meal were Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, Mario Kart 64, Super Smash Brothers, or F-Zero X. The savory and spicy notes of the burrito paired with the sweetness of the drink balanced themselves out, so a sweet-ass game with spicy graphics typically wove itself in perfectly, which was why Goldeneye was the golden choice. Jump out of the bathroom in the Facility level, shoot your KF7 Soviet at your friends, hop back into the safety of the bathroom, reload, take another bite of your burrito, and jump back out for more joyous madness.

This was the scene so many days after school, and I reminisce about them often. The food was easy, and complicated in goofy ways, but it was perfect. The games were the exact thing we needed after a day of school. But this was just the Lunch Menu.

Sometimes we checked out the Dinner Menu when it was late enough in the day.

Our dinner was very similar. It was the same games, the same burritos and cheeses with the same timing, and it might be the same sweet milks, or perhaps they’d be substituted for sodas. But the big change was that after dinner, there would be dessert.

The item’s name was The Quadruple Chocolate Sundae. (Have I mentioned that I like chocolate?) 

Step 1 - Pure chocolate ice cream in a bowl. A generous portion. We’re pre-teens for Pete’s sake!

Step 2 - A healthy pour of chocolate syrup all over. (Mom, we’re running low on chocolate syrup again! I don’t know how! I guess when it becomes a staple at lunch and dinner and dessert, well, then… that’s how!)

Step 3 - Sprinkle some chocolate chips on top. Watch them stick into the chocolate syrup and then slowly cascade down the mountains of ice cream like a slow-motion avalanche.

Step 4 - Chocolate Milk Mix. Huh? Yup. I didn’t make chocolate milk from the dry powder chocolate mix, but we always had it in the house because other people did. No, what I used it for was my ice cream. One spoonful of the powdered chocolate mix was perfect when sprinkled over the ice cream.

You had your smooth and creamy base, your thick liquidy addition, your tiny crunchy bits, and an extra powdery, semi-crispy topper. What’s the thing they always say on the cooking shows? The mouth-feel? Well, don’t say that phrase around three 11-year-old boys unless you want to hear a cacophony of voice-cracking cackling, but it was the accurate word to be used here. A mouth-feel with a plethora of adventures dancing about your tongue.

Also, don’t say that last sentence to the pre-teens either.

I’d still go for The Quadruple Chocolate Sundae now, except it might be a chocolate overload for me nowadays. I think if I substituted the chocolate ice cream for vanilla it might balance it out a bit better.

But these were my favorite things to eat with my buddies when I was younger as we played video games for hours and laughed about every single thing. We didn’t have to worry about work or taxes or power bills… homework was able to wait… we were able to just enjoy moments of pure, uncut bliss.

As a kid, I always thought I could open a restaurant someday, and that I’d have incredible items for the general public. These were what I assumed would be my hot sellers. Clearly, I never followed through. I don’t ever see these types of items on any restaurant menus. But sometimes I think a restaurant could do with food like this.

Nostalgic food.

Transport people to a time where they had no worries. Let them eat the food they ate at a time when the stresses of adulthood were so foreign, they might as well have been in an alien language. Let them play the games of their childhood so that the only numbers they were worried about weren’t on their W-2, rather they were on the scoreboard where they were trying to defeat their friends.

Let adults be kids again, maybe one day a week, maybe one day a month. We might all feel a little better if we got to dip back into innocence for an hour or two.