So-Cal Burritos, Complete With Fries Inside, Land In The East Village

It all started with the sauce. Alex Thaboua has lived in New York City for about ten years now, tending bar at various cocktail hot spots and, most recently, co-founding the popular Mister Paradise in the East Village with his buddy and fellow mixologist Will Wyatt. But although he loves his adopted city, Thaboua couldn't stop thinking about the taco shops of his native San Diego, with their fat, French-fry-laden burritos and that salsa roja, which back home everyone always just called "orange sauce."

"I had been trying to recreate that sauce here for like five years," Thaboua told me. "It was always kind of a side project, but because of all the downtime during the early pandemic, I really locked in last spring, experimenting with batch after batch of the stuff. One day, after tweaking it for the 80th time, it came out absolutely perfect. I made breakfast burritos for the guys at Mister Paradise, poured on the sauce, and that was it, that was the birth of Electric Burrito."

Wyatt agrees. "I was blown away purely by the sauce. I didn't know that something with that level of balance, umami and salt and heat, could even exist." After their initial storefront attempt got snarled in gas line hell, the duo took over the former Xi'an Famous on St. Mark's Place in March, Wyatt did the buildout himself using scrap wood from when they had boarded up Mister Paradise last summer, and Electric Burrito will be open and ready to feed all comers starting today.

The space is small--seating is limited to about a half dozen stools set before a network of counters--but the menu is impressively lengthy. Two burrito styles anchor the proceedings: the California, with fries, cheese, pico de gallo, and your choice of meat, either Carne Asada, Pollo Asado, or Carnitas; and the Conga, which is stuffed with beans, rice, crema, and one of the meats.

During a preview last week, I got to try the California Carne Asada, and it was excellent, boasting big, bold flavors, a nice crunch from both the fries and the seared edges of the beef, and topped off perfectly with the fiery orange sauce.

There are also a number of Breakfast Burritos, served all day and deep into the night, including a basic Egg n' Cheese with beans, a funky Chorizo, Egg, and Cheese, and a Veggie Breakfast number with chipotle portobello providing some heft. I ate the somewhat confusingly titled Lunch Burrito from this section, and it too was superb, with soft semi-scrambled eggs, loads of crisp bacon, refried beans, melted cheese, fries, and more of that orange sauce.

Shrimp makes an appearance twice in the "Speciality Burrito" section, most notably in the Johnny Utah, a surf-n-turf beast that pairs the crustaceans with carne asada. There are Taco versions of much of the above--corn tortillas will be deployed for these--as well as loaded-up Nachos, a gooey Quesadilla, and a Burrito Bowl for those who only want the fillings. Real stoner-food players, though, should get the gnarly Carne Asada Fries, a massive mound of meat-studded spuds laden with melted cheese and guacamole.

Another must-try here are the bottled sodas Wyatt has invented especially for Electric Burrito, both of which use kitchen waste as their base. There's a Citrus Breeze made from the endless lime rinds both of their restaurants produce, and a remarkably light and refreshing Pico Pop, billed cheekily as "America's Favorite Salsa Soda" and tasting of sweet, fizzy tomatoes.

"The burrito is such a quintessentially California thing," said Thaboua. "I grew up surfing at Pacific Beach, Mission Beach, Ocean Beach, and skating all over Clairemont, and in every neighborhood, there are like a million taco shops. It was just always a part of our diet, our food culture. And when we got older and started drinking, it became our after-hours food. I can't tell you how many times we'd get hammered and then go eat a bunch of burritos and wake up feeling fine." To that end, Wyatt said they hope to keep Electric Burrito open until 5 a.m. in the future.

Electric Burrito is located at 81 St. Mark's Place, just west of First Avenue, and starting Monday will be open daily from noon to 10 p.m., with hours expanding in both directions as staffing and customer excitement allow (@electricburritonyc)