Plan Burrito
29 Castle Street, Shrewsbury
Mexican Fast Food
Worth A Visit (Now & Then)
Mexican food in Shrewsbury has been a crick in my neck. I have been saying for years now that Shrewsbury needs anywhere that sells decent Mexican food - anywhere, literally anywhere that doesn’t just do tasteless fillings that you can have in either taco, burrito, quesadilla, nacho or whatever else ‘Mexican’ format you can think of to help ensure prep is minimal and you don’t waste anything - who cares about flavour, right?
My hysteria reached fever pitch when Plan Burrito turned up in town with a storm of claims about various prizes won in the realm of street food! You might think that this is extremely exciting news - and sometimes it is! The only problem is that there are about 100000 different awards given out by 5000 different award bodies, from 100 different parts of the country. So unless you are really involved in that specific area of the food industry its really hard to know how serious the awards are. I don’t know what ‘Best Street Food Award’ they won in 2022 BUT winning is winning - they have to be best in some way- so there’s something for them to be proud of and something for us to look forward to!
Maybe its my old age, or maybe its my recently formed gluten intolerance (that means I can’t have any delicious belly bloating fun anymore) but I struggle to muster the motivation to battle down the queues in newly opened places. These days I choose to wait until I can just walk in, get my food and eat it in relative peace. I used to get twitchy when somewhere new opened in Shrewsbury and I couldn’t get in there straight away! I’m glad I am over that, because this place seemed to be busy constantly - I would have lost my mind wondering what I had been missing out on!
Where’s the line that differentiates fast food and street food? Then where on earth does a takeaway sit on this if you aren’t eating in? They say they are street food, I would say fast food but who really cares? It’s all just marketing nonsense! I always feel that street food needs to be A. on the street and B. have an element of fresh cooking involved - neither of which Plan Burrito offers.
A bright pink neon sign does nothing to seduce me in any restaurant. I think it’s my old age but I have seriously developed an irrational hatred for pink neon signs in restaurants!
What does seduce me, are the bottles of Cholula Hot Sauce on the tables - a good, solid choice!
I struggle with fast food (sorry, street food) places these days - its that aforementioned and troublesome gluten intolerance - but I was really happy to hear on the grapevine that I could have a burrito bowl, without the flour tortilla! Even happier that it wasn’t called anything like a ‘Naked Burrito’ or something ludicrous! With no clothes on, I think I would describe myself as looking like a ‘naked burrito’…….
Once I’d shuffled past the neon sign, refusing to look at it, I asked what was gluten free and got directed in a prompt fashion (typical of a fast food restaurant) to the world’s most complicated A4 sized ingredients matrix, where every ingredient, filling or piece of packaging was colour coded, letter coded and numbered to ensure there was no chance of confusion. Of course you have to add the pressure of someone (the prompt service person) watching as you try to decipher this cryptic puzzle - resulting in you blurting out anything you are more than 75% sure is gluten free and then crossing your fingers! Reminds me, I really have to book an eye test! But as I always say, you shouldn’t mess about with allergies and intolerances - it is much less of a risk to ask staff to point to a sign than try to train them and they make a mistake in recommending things! Anyway, I was pleased I had checked because the beef (which I was going to order) had gluten in it! Phew - major emergency plumbing works avoided!
I opted for the tinga chicken - I am a big fan of tinga chicken! Service is a left to right, Subway (are they street food?) style conveyor belt of meat, rice and toppings! It’s the same system all burrito fast food places all over the country use - makes sense! All the delicious things were actually nicely covered and looked fresh, unlike it’s American fast food (I mean, street food) sandwich cousin - another bonus point!
There are loads of options to choose from which is nice! It instantly made me think, ‘ooo I’ll have that next time’ on some things - this is the kind of excitement I need in my life at my ripe old age! I swiftly moved down the line (having memorised the complicated allergy matrix) and within the matter of seconds my bowl was looking pretty full. Surely, there’s no chance more is going to fit in - check the conveyor belt - there’s more to come! I genuinely feel like I’m winning! Finally some sauces go on the top and I am left with something which looks remarkably like the instagram pictures I had seen - great job! It looked so good that I almost asked them to leave the lid off! I could see what was about to happen - bulging pot of food, crushing lid approaching! I think squeezing a lid onto a bulging pot of delicious things is the only acceptable time to completely destroy your hard earned presentation skills. It really reminded me of my days in a corporate job where I could only get my kicks by going to Morrison’s and getting the ‘as much as you can fit in this tub’ salad for lunch, squeezing as much as possible into the tubs, looking at the person on the counter look in horror as I squeeze in 2 more cubes of potato, then rushing through the tills hoping it didn’t explode - never put the beetroot salad in last, if that goes, it makes a right mess. Then it was back to the office to show off about how I had ‘stuck it to the man’ once again……
Anyway, what were we on about…..oh yeah fast food (I, mean street food)……..
So the lid squished all that lovely work they had put into the presentation but that doesn’t matter, I had seen how lovely it was, and if it hadn’t squished it, I only would have moaned about small portions! It was £9.50 because I paid £0.50 to make it crunchy with some crushed nachos - for £0.50 I will NEVER turn down the crunch of some tortilla chips!
I decided to eat it at home (10 minute walk) and was really pleased that the food was still warm, flavoursome, tasted fresh and was pretty well seasoned. It’s really good value for £9.50 - there was a lot of food and not a lot to moan about but it left me in a bit of a quandary. Was it too much for lunch? Not enough for tea? And at £9.50, how often am I going to spend that on lunch in a fast food joint (sorry, street food) - I might have preferred to see it slightly smaller and slightly cheaper - but I am just one man and one opinion, so I am happy to go with the consensus on this and I think the consensus of most people is more, more, more when it comes to food and portion sizes! So expect some good bang for your buck!
