At first, it was a joke. Economist Derek Wilson and his friend David Thomsen, an engineer, noticed they'd fallen into a routine of eating burritos at lunchtime and would kid each other about writing a book on the subject. But as the two young San Francisco professionals frequented more of the Bay Area's wealth of taquerias, Wilson says, they came to a troubling realization: burritos were "the most exciting part of our existence" in the corporate world.
So Thomsen and Wilson, MA '94, got serious about burritos. They started with a course on how to write a book proposal. "We felt pretty silly," Wilson recalls, noting that the other members of the class wanted to do practical, how-to books on topics like real estate or finance. But classmates loved their idea, an agent finally agreed to peddle it, and the two friends quit corporate living to track taquerias coast to coast and south of the border. Along with untold numbers of burritos, they devoured every factoid about the Southwestern staple that is fast becoming a national favorite.
The result is ¡Burritos! Hot on the Trail of the Little Burro (Gibbs Smith, 1998; $12.95). Its 114 pages are packed, like their subject, with a melange of ingredients. Recipes and taqueria ratings (the authors' favorite is Los Gallos in Redwood City) are seasoned with historical tidbits about chiles and tortillas, a blueprint for successful burrito construction at home and mini-lessons in Spanish. The authors offer advice on where to spot a promising taqueria: Good Burrito Territory includes San Francisco's Mission District and Rogers Park in northwest Chicago, while Bad Burrito Territory includes places like Skowheegan, Maine, and Singapore. The world's largest burrito is duly recorded -- it was put together in May 1997 in Mountain View, weighing in at 4,456 pounds and stretching 3,579 feet. The book even serves up some burrito haiku.
Although Wilson earned his Stanford degree at the Food Research Institute, the burrito project was pure serendipity, a career aberration, he says. Following graduation in 1994, he spent two years as an economic consultant to the government of Indonesia (Bad Burrito Territory). Except for a three-month break researching the book, he has worked as an economist in San Francisco ever since.
Wilson admits there was a brief time during the weeks of eating nothing but burritos when he didn't think he could face another one. But it passed. He and his friend are still hooked. "If Betty Ford opened a burrito clinic," they write, "we wouldn't check in unless there were a decent taqueria nearby."
