About a month or so ago, on March 12, Chipotle finally opened a restaurant in the most brain dead obvious place in the entire city. This, more than a year after opening their first Boston restaurant in what amounts to the middle of no where. It was a Wednesday, and WND can’t go to a (non-local) chain, so we had a pre-dinner at Chipotle to check it out.
The Harvard location holds a lot of promise. Like Davis Square, and just about every where else in Boston there is stiff burrito competition. Of course, Chipotle tops them all, but they pulled out all the stops on the first night. They were ready to go with tons of food and enough people to keep everything on the line fresh, continuously, as people streamed by for hours. I have to say the freshness made a lot of difference; it was the best burrito I’ve had in quite some time. That will hopefully convince everyone who was there of Chipotle superiority.
I say hopefully because I don’t have to stand in line at the Harvard location — I’m going to still be going to Davis because its much closer to me most of the time. Davis, does have some problems, that the Harvard location would do well to solve. Davis lacks room, and they often have just one employee on the line, and at most two, even at peak times. Also, Davis lacks seating, it can seat about 34 people by my rough count, but only 16 of those are in chairs; the rest are stools. The Harvard location is much more equipped to handle lots of people. In fact we didn’t even have trouble finding a seat in the free-for-all. They also have a huge 8 person table, which is a good addition.
After pre-dinner we went to Lizzy’s Ice Cream, my choice. It was small, but kind of alright, sort of. It was better than Herrells, but just goto JP Licks, you’ll be happy you did.