Pancho’s Burritos, Arndale Market, Manchester

On numerous occasions recently I have found myself strolling round the Arndale Market, looking for something different to cure the onset of the early afternoon hunger pangs. I normally wander aimlessly, moving from stall to stall, hoping to find something to take my fancy and a part of the Market has been closed recently whilst they put in new stalls. This Friday I noticed it was open again and one of the new stalls caught my eye,  “Pancho’s Burritos”,  a tiny stall with a small menu, but it looked very promising, “go on then” I thought, “can’t be worse than Bar Burrito”, which I hate by the way.

The list of ingredients that goes into one of Pancho’s burrito’s was impressive, rice, salsa, peppers, sour cream, I can’t remember the full list but you can have either a Pork, Chicken, Beef or veggie burrito, “amazing” I thought and didn’t bother to read the rest of the menu (or the rest of the options for the burrito, I was already sold on the idea).

The staff were so pleasant, friendly and helpful and they actually looked Mexican, I know I sound racist but I would rather have a burrito made by a nice, polite Mexican gentleman than three girls who only work at the place to get them through college and who throw it together in an instance (yes I’m talking about Bar Burrito again).

Like I said, I didn’t read the rest of the options for the burrito, which I’m glad about. The polite man asked if I would like a spinach, plain or pepper tortilla, “incredible you get a choice of tortilla”, I went with the spinach, then he kindly asked if I would like it spicy or mild, “even better”, I opted to spice it up.

The care, attention and expertise that the nice man made the burrito with confirms my slightly racist remark about the food, making this place a goldmine because the people who work there actually know what they are doing and take pride in the food they prepare. This is backed up by the fact they heat up each tortilla separately and only when an order has taken place, and by the way they put the ingredients into the tortilla in just the right order.

Once my new amigo had finished tightly wrapping my burrito and he passed it to me I was surprised at the size of it, nicely wrapped in tinfoil and about the size of 5 sticks of dynamite taped together, I was impressed.

I took my explosive over to a table, unwrapped the burrito and bit into it, the number of flavours that exploded was wonderful, you could taste the rice, salsa, etc and the pork was so well cooked and tender to bite, I was staggered. Further into the burrito I worked out why it looked like 5 sticks of dynamite, it blew my head off, the spices were very hot indeed but this only added to the burrito, complimenting all the other flavours and after the hit of spice you got the warm, soft, gentle taste of the sour cream, if only all burritos were this good.

Sombrero’s off to Pancho’s Burritos it was an amazing experience of flavours and spice, I will definitely going back and for £3.99 it is well worth it. This is how you make a burrito, RIP Bar Burrito, you will not be missed.