Pretty much every culture in the world has independently invented the same four things: bladed weapons, fermentation, pigments, and a way to wrap dough around food.
I’m talking sandwiches. I’m talking kebabs, calzones, dumplings, gyros, and, of course, burritos. And it warms my heart to know that pretty much everyone, ever, has felt the need to stab someone, draw a picture of it, and then wrap up the day with a pint and a bite to eat. That’s usually how my days go, too.
What drives me crazy is that Dunedin has somehow ignored the unparalleled GOAT of dough-wrapped foods: the burrito. Tell me why it is that this city has, like, six late-night kebab shops and not one good, reliable, and (most importantly) cheap burrito joint. Tell me. I’ll wait.
Burritos and kebabs are two sides of the same tortilla. And I have nothing against kebabs, by the way - my heart and soul belong to Mustafa from Huzur Kebab. Thank you for your service. But these two meals are basically the same thing, just with different fillings. I’ve even seen a kebab shop use store-bought tortillas to wrap their falafel. Not dürüm, literally just tortillas, in their packaging, from the supermarket. If you’ve got a tortilla, lettuce and sauces, that’s like 25% burrito already. You’re just missing beans.
It’s not like it even has to taste that good, because students here don’t really know what proper Mexican food tastes like. If they did, Del Sol would’ve been run out of town years ago - they’re only still here because of the hats. Besides, all the Mexican places we do have (if you can call them that) close early. We need burritos when we’re at our most vulnerable: late at night, when our wits have abandoned us.
My proposal is that the next time a kebab shop closes, someone needs to buy that joint and start slinging burritos. You’d barely need to change the way the store is set up, and you’ve got a consumer base ready to be wowed by your out-of-this-hemisphere flavouring.
The other alternative is to lobby the government to start sending all South/Latin American immigrants to Ōtepoti Dunedin, in which case the problem might fix itself. Right now, Wānaka and Queenstown have the best Mexican/Cuban/Chilean flavours in the country, and that’s no accident. They have the people there to get it done, and we don’t. Now, I’m not saying that it would be fair to open a residence visa specially for Dunedin-bound burrito-makers, but I’m also not saying that I would be particularly upset by this visa, either. Whatever it takes to get burrito culture rolling, as it were.
What’s the biggest difference between the U.S. and Aotearoa? It’s not gun laws, it’s not sheep. It’s the burritos, or lack thereof. It's complete blind ignorance to one of the best, cheapest, easiest foods there is out there, in a hub of consumers perfectly suited and already trained to consume a similar product. It’s an untapped goldmine. And it pains me.