California Tortilla — Restaurant in Maryland

Why you should go to this place instead of Chipotle:

1. Food tastes better, and prices are comparable;

2. The staff (at least the staff at this particular location) are pleasant and helpful. None of that sulky, sour attitude that the crew at Chipotle gives you...and yeah, I've been to more than one, and it's always the same: That look like you're disturbing them by placing an order, and they mumble questions to you and when you ask them to repeat what they said, they give you a heavy sigh and mumble it again in the exact same petulant tone;

3. Nice décor and music, not the sharp metal tables and torture room chairs that Chipotle expects you to sit on (and I don't care if the metal is recycled...Why would anyone think a room made out of metal would be comfortable to eat in?). Also, at California Tortilla, they don't try to blast your eardrums out like Chipotle does with the music turned up (and it doesn't help that it echoes off all the metal in the room).

Look, I've been to this place a couple of times and never had a bad experience. It's Mexican fast food, but it's decent and the staff have been nice. I even called once with a large to-go order and had to make several changes, and I thought for sure the girl who was taking the order over the phone was going to get frustrated with me, but she didn't. She handled it very well and didn't make me feel like a jerk for asking questions or making changes to my order.

So if you're in the mood for Mexican food (and fast), skip that other place and come...

Update 5/19/2022:

Freshly updated interior is much more pleasant. I had the carnitas quesadilla and chips and queso again. Both were fine, no improvement in the food but fine. If the other fast burrito place had better seating I'd go there instead for sure. I guess the food just lacked any real character. I'm sure that's the purpose of the wall of flame, but I still want to taste the food. Well, when it's worth tasting.

And looking at my previous review, no idea what word my phone was trying to help me with when it substituted trivium, maybe tricky.

Original: This location is better than some others I've been to. In fact this one I won't mind returning to somewhat often though some other locations are permanent no for me. I had the pork quesadilla the last time there and it was really good, very fresh and not greasy. Chips and queso were also really good. Only let down was the tea, next time water will be fine. Parking is adequate but not plentiful, and the drive to get in is trivium because of so many bad drivers in the area combined with poor civil design for the traffic circulation. Might be best to park in the lot on the side closest to Giant and walk up rather than fight traffic. Otherwise the location is great with plenty around to make the trip worthwhile if you need groceries or...

They changed some ingredients at this location. My husband and I come here for the "Southwestern Salad" and the only thing we ever experienced is that the bowls they use change from time to time. Yesterday my husband noticed that they used a spinach based salad as opposed to their normal iceberg salad. My husband is allergic to spinach, so allergic that we keep an "epi-pen" ready, just in case. The guy behind the counter thought it was funny that my husband got upset about the salad and made comments to the other guy who had made up the salad. Firstly, they need to be more respectful. Secondly, they need to realize that some of their customers can understand Spanish and know when they are being rude. In the end, they recreated the salad with the iceberg base for my husband. I, regretfully, ate my spinach based salad and found it to be a...