Not in Park Slope.

Over the past several weeks, one Billy Diddles has been a frequent commenter on this site, hilariously bemoaning the lack of proper Mission-style burritos in the Slope. I asked him to pen a full-length screed for HPS, which you can find in its entirety below. Read at your own risk!

In 2010, New York Magazine ranked 60 NYC neighborhoods and proclaimed Park Slope, Brooklyn, my neighborhood, the most fucking awesome neighborhood of all (suck it other neighborhoods!). The phrase they used was “most livable,” but “fucking awesome” is clearly what they meant. The criteria for this ranking centered on twelve categories, including housing cost and quality, public schools, green space, safety, and transit options. And while there was a distinct category for “food and restaurants,” one can’t help but assume that the writer of this article (I’m talking to you, genius statistician and writer, Nate Silver) must have been suffering from a slight case of being very retarded. How else could he have overlooked the one culinary query that truly determines a neighborhood’s livability: How delicious are the burritos? For had Nate asked himself this obvious question, he would have come to a much different conclusion; Park Slope, he would have realized, is the cruelest of places, its citizens tortured beyond anything anyone could ever have imagined. Is Park Slope worse than Mogadishu, Somalia? God yes. Much worse. Worse than Nazi Germany? I’d call it a draw.

I won’t provide the details of what comprises a Park Slope burrito (mainly because I don’t want you to shit your pants in disgust), but suffice it to say, it’s not the sort of thing one expects to find in the greatest neighborhood in the greatest city in the world (suck it other cities!). And things are getting worse, not better. Since 2010, we’ve lost two of our most dependable burrito shops, La Taqueria and Uncle Moe’s. And though, by any standard, these two establishments were mediocre at best, the citizenry of Park Slope has been so beaten down that we actually mourned their loss. As one commenter on this website noted: “I used to love this place {La Taqueria}. It always looked busy to me until that health violation.” Yes, so tragic to witness the closing of a second-rate restaurant with established health violations. People of Park Slope, I fear that we have become like dogs fed a steady diet of pig shit, and when one day the pig shit shop closes down, we weep. Where’s our pig shit? Our sort-of-tasty, ever reliable pig shit? I miss that pig shit. But my hungry people, hark, for it’s just as Jesus and Gandhi and Steve Jobs always said: we deserve more than pig shit! Because, let’s face it, while Park Slope is awesome, it’s not exactly the easiest place in the world to live. Our apartments are tiny, rents are astronomical, one can’t walk down Union without being asked yet again whether we’ve signed up for clean energy, our mice display serious cunning, and gangs of feral stroller-children run rampant in our streets. We live literally on top of each other, and, I don’t know about you, but my neighbors are learning to play the violin. You think screaming baby is an unpleasant sound? Shrieking siren? Try first year violinist.

The point is we Park Slopers have paid and sacrificed to live in a great neighborhood, and a great neighborhood has restaurants and, goddamnit, some of those restaurants have amazing, Mission-style burritos with amply-stocked salsa bars. That’s right, not just any old burrito, but the king of burritos: the San Francisco “Mission-style” burrito which is distinguished by the following five elements:

1) They're ridiculously massive.

2) Butt cheap.

3) The man-hole-sized tortilla is steamed, thereby making it more stretchable and more structurally sound.

4) The ingredients stuffed inside are especially fucking delicious.

5) There is an accompanying salsa bar which features complimentary salsa, chopped cilantro & onions, and pickled carrots & jalapenos.

And what do we, in Park Slope, NYC’s most bitchin’ neighborhood, have? Well, our Mexican food can be categorized in the following 4 ways:

1) Mexican food made by Chinese people. Happy Fresh Tortillas Grill falls under this category, as does New Happy Taco on Park Pl (apparently Mexican food becomes, if not “delicious,” at the very least “happy” when prepared by Chinese cooks). While this cuisine is tasty in its own misguided way, their burritos are an abomination.

2) Fancy Mexican food. Fonda in South Slope falls under this category. Yes, it is an excellent restaurant, but they do not even serve burritos so why the hell are we talking about them? Obviously, Mexican cuisine encompasses many more flavors and dishes than burritos and enchiladas, but I’m talking about the Mexican food your average Californian eats twice a week, not some epicurean pumpkin-sauce-and-salmon concoction. Chefs of Fonda, you are creative and highly skilled, however make us some massive, cheap burritos, or else suck it.

3) Awful Mexican food made by people who are deeply afraid of spice and who not only don’t use cilantro, but actually seem to confuse it with parsley. I hesitate to name names here, but we all know the half dozen Mexican restaurants in Park Slope that seem like they’ve been transplanted from an airport food court — where the margaritas are slushy, the sauces, bland, and the salsa, ketchupy.

4) Mexican restaurants which are exceptional in Park Slope, but which would be below average in any Southern Californian or Bay area city. My two favorites in this category (and therefore my two favorite burrito spots in Park Slope) are El Jalapeno (warm chips, tasty salsa, nice management) and Neuvo Mexico (respectable food, terrible nickel-and-diming management: find a way to make up the cost of chips and salsa without charging people for them. Don’t worry, you’ll figure it out. Every place in California has.)

There is, perhaps, a 5^th category, and this is the saddest category of all (now would be the time to take out your tissues and prepare for a good cry): The well-prepared taco restaurant. Oaxaca on 4^th Ave fits into this category. Solid tacos: generous with their limes, unafraid of cilantro, and anyone who doesn’t like pickled onions is an animal, no better than the canine who nonchalantly chews on a desiccated turd. About this 5^th category (and about our neighborhood’s lack of burritos), a frequent contributor to this website, the noble and distinguished ‘ParkPlace’ noted, “…I'm actually quite grateful we have solid options for tacos in the nearby vicinity...” And this, of course, is where the sadness comes in. Though I don’t personally know ‘ParkPlace’, I nonetheless judge him/her to be a veritable lion of a human being. And yet this lion, this caged, demoralized lion…I’m actually tearing up here…this formerly majestic lion has gotten so accustomed to pig-shit-Mexican-food that the poor lad/lass is genuinely grateful for a well-made taco. A taco! And yes, I know that whining about imperfect burritos proves that society has officially run out of problems, but a taco? Is this how low we’ve sunk, Park Slope? That we’re satisfied with tacos? The taco is to the burrito as mozzarella sticks are to Roma Pizzeria’s fresh mozzarella slice. The taco is to the burrito as my mother in-law’s vegan apple cake is to a Colson Patisserie fruit tart. As a piece of bologna wrapped in Swiss is to an ambrosial City Sub sandwich. As masturbation is to a college orgy (full disclaimer: I’ve never been anywhere near a college orgy, but have, admittedly, masturbated to the idea of one). Well no more! No more shall the denizens of Park Slope be victimized by odious Mexican food, or average Mexican food, or by Mexican food’s least impressive ambassador, the taco! Citizens of the Slope, join me in rising up against this great injustice! This is where the revolution begins:

1. See someone using a wok to sauté your “fajitas?” Rise up!
2. Notice that the garnish on your “authentic” torta is parsley? Rise up!
3. Receive a burrito whose tortilla is cracking because they rolled it using a cold tortilla? What are you waiting for? Rise the fuck up!

Okay…unfortunately, if you’re anything like me, you have no idea how to rise the fuck up. Best I can surmise, rising the fuck up would mean Molotov cocktails and time-consuming protests, secret meetings and burning cars. I for one would rather dine at the fifty burger places in our fair neighborhood than figure out how to roll a car over and set it ablaze without either crushing or blowing myself up. So I’d like to make an appeal, a plea to the talented Mission burrito craftspeople of the world:

Oh kind and generous burrito-makers, please rescue Park Slope from its mediocrity. Take pity on us because we pay a lot in rent, have annoying neighbors, and want only to cozy up to a choice burrito. Or better yet, don’t take pity on us. Open up a burrito shop in Park Slope and bilk the bejeezes out of us. Burritos are six bucks in San Francisco? Charge us nine. You normally don’t rape your clients with the sour cream dispenser? We’ll bend right over. Spit in our salsa, put a knee to our collective balls, overcharge the hell out of us: we don’t care! Just show up and cook. Serve your swollen, bewitching burritos and let us graze like stoned billy goats at the tasty, complimentary salsa bar. You’ll get rich and we…well, we will be transformed entirely.

Make no mistake, my fellow Slopers: at the moment Marty Markowitz cuts the ribbon at our new Mission-style burrito shop, a weight will be lifted from us all. We will suddenly feel love for the pestering, well-meaning clean energy purveyor, for the overpriced milk at Union Market, and for the Co-Op’s esoteric rules. No longer will we frown at the strollers clogging our sidewalks, at the screeching violin drifting up through our floorboards, at the lack of a single empty seat in all our coffee shops (does anyone have a real job in this neighborhood or are we all freelance writers?). No sir! On that monumental day, we will grin the grin of the truly contented. Signing the check for our huge rents — our tiny apartments as stuffed to capacity as the burrito we’ve just consumed — bean-stains on our shirts, cilantro in our teeth, oh will we grin! Then, and only then, will we finally have earned the title of greatest, sexiest, most livable, most fuckable, best damn neighborhood in all of the five boroughs. Nay, in all the world. Hallelujah.