Burrito Bandwidth

I’m a big fan of Chipolte burritos. There’s a Chipoltes a couple blocks from my house, so I go there numerous times a month. Recently, I’ve discovered that the new salad option they have offers a huge advantage – more food. The salad basically contains at least all the ingredients of a burrito, plus a mound of romaine lettuce. Since it’s served in a bowl instead of a tortilla shell, there are no capacity constraints or diminished “burrito bandwidth” as I like to call it, due to the size of the tortilla shell. This means that you are likely to receive even more burrito ingredients along with the lettuce. The obvious disadvantage, however, is no tortilla shell, which provides necessary carbohydrates, and yumminess.

On Tuesday evening I’m standing in line at Chipoltes, and watching my salad being made. As I stared at the heaps of ingredients being piled in my bowl, and lamenting over the tortilla I sacrificed in the name of quantity, I had an epiphany. The bowl contained a lot of ingredients, more than would fit in one burrito. In fact, there was almost enough to fill two burritos. Two is more than one. One is less than two. Chipoltes isn’t the only place that sells tortillas. The wheels were in full spin, and soon my bicycle wheels were spinning my way into Safeway, which is actually on the way home. I made a lone purchase of one 8 pack of burrito size tortilla shells, and once back in my own kitchen, I transformed my chicken burrito salad into two burritos. The burrito bandwidth was hence increased, and a new level of cheapness was obtained.