London's Best...Burritos

Today kicks off the first in a series that I’m calling London’s Best. In my highly opinionated opinion, I have found several food-stuffs while eating around London that I think qualify as the best of that particular food-stuff I’ve found. Today’s London’s Best is a burrito.

London suffers from a confusing lack of Mexican food generally, and particularly a lack of good Mexican food. It’s easy enough to attribute it to the smaller numbers of native Mexicans creating their cuisine in the UK than, say, in the US. However, Mexican food can be outstandingly good without a heap of complexity going into it. I’ve long thought that if I could start my own burrito business, I’d have a hit on my hands.

Well, sadly, someone’s beaten me to it. But I can’t be too sad – these burritos are wonderful things, and any jealousy I have over someone acting on my burrito idea vanishes with eating the thing, because I’m just too joyous that someone has served me such a thing of tasty excellence. Freebird Burritos operates out of Exmouth Market on Monday – Thursdays, serving behemoths of burritos that keep you going for hours.

The burritos aren’t just large and packed full of bits, but the bits inside have great attention to detail. Each burrito comes with rice, your choice of refried or black bean, your choice of meat, your choice of salsa spiciness, cheese and sour cream, and optional guacamole. The rice alone is stunning, lightly flavoured with lime and coriander and tying the whole thing together. My favourite meat is the Carnitas (pork), which is cooked in juniper berries and bay leaves and some other magic to make it taste as good as it does. All servings are very generous, and the only complaint is that the burrito is so stuffed full of good things that it can get quite messy, but you do learn how to create a foil shield with the wrapper to avoid disasters. They have begun to do deliveries of 4 or more orders to the same office, which can be a dangerous thing since it guarantees more burritos in my future. Which will make me fight that jealous/happy balance all the more often.