Super Burrito, Better America

The United States, sometime probably in the 1980s, had undergone something of a change. Or, rather, an un-change. Drive along any interstate, get off on any exit, and you will find familiar corporate faces greeting your arrival. Some of the places you visit may seem different, but only superficially. Get off an exit in Wisconsin, Minnesota, or Iowa; you will find a Kwik Trip (or a Casey’s General Store). Around the East Coast, you’ll find a Wawa. Then there are your Circle K’s and RaceTrac’s and Sheetz. I’m not well versed on popular Southwest or West Coast gas chains, but the ones mentioned offer the faux-intrepid similar accommodations. But gas stations aren’t the only ubiquities a person might find, and their reach is far beyond Highway Hubs.

McDonald’s, Burger King, Chili’s, Cheesecake Factory, Taco Bell, Qdoba, KFC – on and on and on. There’s nothing wrong with any of those places – aside from the obvious things which pop up in news stories now and again regarding working conditions and food quality, but you will find them all over the country with little to no regional or local variance.

Like how major retail stores are designed with essentially the same layout so no matter what specific store you walk into, you’ll know where everything is – many towns and cities across the United States have undergone a similar restructuring. No matter where you go, you’ll always be where you left.

Thus, local establishments carry an important role in the modern post-capitalist zeitgeist by offering something that few corporate chains can – a personality. A soul. A sense that you’ve spent time and money somewhere or on something that was worth it. Local burger joints, vegan food trucks, steakhouses. Each add a little flavor to American Life’s carbon copy layout.

And so, off the highway in Elkhorn, Wisconsin; tucked in among the irregular gridded layout of “downtown”; corner sat on a parking lot situated behind – and in service to – a right-angle row of buildings whose purpose from the back view is anyone’s guess— unassuming in a squat, white building, is Super Burrito¹.

It was founded in 2009, though it would be 2-3 years before I learned of it. Its front area is a small grocery store predominantly catering to Elkhorn’s Latino community. However, most of the residence of Elkhorn will know the place for the other part of the business: Mexican food.

For a modest sum you can buy a hefty burrito. You can buy both American and Mexican style tacos. Sopas. Tamales. And while my preference is the burrito, specifically the jerky steak burrito, I’ve tried every menu item at least once and can say there’s not a bad one.

The other thing that there’s ‘not a bad one’ of, is poor opinions. While I can’t say with absolute certainty they do not exist— I have not, in my decade of frequenting the establishment, heard a single bad word.

Super Burrito has all the hallmarks of small town dining: Cute/handsome and friendly staff standing like clarkia in the businesses front; an owner with a memory for faces and those faces preferred orders; a gentlemen with a face tattoo who will chase you down after you’ve made the classic customer gaffe of leaving half your order on the counter; unseen cooks whose occult methods of transubstantiating steak and rice and beans and tortillas are hidden in a kitchen at the rear of the establishment and is like a world unto itself.

It was winter 2010 when I had gotten home from my deployment in Iraq, a whole long story in itself, but the important points are that:

1. I was there.
2. I returned.
3. I was a Fobbit (=someone who did not leave base) and did not experience combat and so was thankfully lacking the associated traumas.

So, after the whole demobilization process which took about a week and was arguably worse than the whole year I spent abroad; I was released and went back to the town I grew up in. I’m not going to say the thing people normally say when returning to the static normality of their hometowns after a long time away – because it wouldn’t be true. Elkhorn had changed, but in a way both subtly and profoundly.

Getting food around town had previously been relegated to either corporate chains or else places whose ‘to-go options were limited or non-existent; whose dine-in options were too formal for a quick bite. But now there was a place that offered something I did not know I lacked in my life until a friend introduced me Super Burrito.

I had eaten at Chipotle and Qdoba and so was not a stranger to large burritos but for dollars less I got much more food – a fact still true even with the recent price increases. And more over, I could taste the practiced ease of the making of it. The care and concern for a job done right. That’s a feeling most local restaurants give – but to have this feeling of adherence to form be so precisely packed in a flour tortilla that I was getting to-go was something I had never experienced.

I’ve moved around the state, never far from my roots but far enough that a trip to Elkhorn for a specific food which – on the surface – could be had just about anywhere, was too much an endeavor for what you were getting. That last statement was what a cynic might say. But I, even in my cynical youth, did that very thing.

I am not joking when I say I used to fabricate reasons to see friends and family in order to justify traveling from Milwaukee or Whitewater or Madison just to have a quesadilla or tamales (Super Burrito was my tamales experience and still the Gold Standard for me – though my mothers-in-law are a close second). But my big reason for making this trip was always the jerky steak burrito.

I don’t know what else I can say regarding this before slipping into hyperbolic territory, which is something it might seem like I’ve already done but I promise you I have not. Like a profound apotheosis or religious conversion, it’s not an easy thing to put into words. The feelings are too abstract. The food at SB is a mood booster, a thing that I get when I’m feeling sad; a thing that I look forward to making the extra effort to get after work when all I want to do is go to bed. It is something that grounds me when I’m feeling anxious. Something which improves my general body sensations when I’m hungover.

The place is oddly important in both my life and the lives of others in Elkhorn – even if they don’t know it. But of course, some of them do, because the upset in the community a few years back when the business was slotted to close was a palpable thing. Maybe not panic, but certainly sadness. And then it was sold to someone who has kept the place basically the same and this existential crisis flitted away as abruptly as it arrived. Like if a beloved relative was taken to the hospital and the worst of one’s fears sat at the forefront of your brain until you arrived at their place of convalescence to find that they were alright.

And because they are alright, you are alright.

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Footnote: Also known as Supermercado America. This is a recent development, and I don’t exactly know if the place is called Super Burrito or Supermercado America as the sign on the corner of the property says ‘Supermercado America’ and they answer the phone by saying that same thing sometimes when you call to place an order – but online it shows up as Super Burrito. My investigations into this matter are still pending.