wow. the sign at the front of the line at this store today said something about “attention soft taco lovers (and the rest of you, really). we’re now offering corn tortillas for the soft tacos if you want to try it. let us know whatchoo think.”

so, naturally I had to try them. and they were good. this is certainly a step towards authenticity, which is a “good thing” in many people’s corn-tortilla-loving-minds. in my case the tortillas were not great. they seemed like they had been sliced with a knife - as I rolled them up they split letting lots of food dump out. I don’t mind much, but it was weird. perhaps this natural aspect of corn tortillas is why burritoblog.com’s jonah feld calls for two tortillas on a real taco.

it’s pretty interesting. this store, i’ve heard, is a trial store for new things. certainly being close to the corporate offices helps in that regard. i wonder how the corn tortillas will go for them. i think that perhaps it’s time to make a campaign to get people to go to this store and order lots of these tortillas so that they’ll do it at more stores.

I ate with bug today so we’re splitting.

also, today is 3 days before the 14th birthday of chipotle. So don’t forget and you can meet me at the first chipotle store at 11AM so that we can buy a burrito in celebration. yay.

also, (also!) they are now doing delivery from this store at 16th and blake - so the chipotle delivery from the colfax store wasn’t a fluke. Adam writes about the beauties of the don’t stand in line (DSL) delivery system at chipotle and how it makes an offline online connection which makes a lot of sense to me.

and finally, pete in the city discusses a vip card or perhaps just using a Colorado drivers license to determine pecking rights in the chipotle line.

i love it.

so, i met my dad and wife at the chipotle. mom was running an errand. then i walked in and the lady behind the tortilla steamer wearing the red hat and black shirt was my mom.

craziness.

for my birthday she asked the manager if she could get behind the line and she did. then she asked me (in spanish) “que quieres para cenar” or something similar and we had some fun talking in spanish. her spanish is surprisingly good, but generally bad, so the line staff enjoyed hearing us joking (at least I think they did).

good times, good times.

We ate on the pearl street mall because the store was too busy. Literally. There were probably 100 people in line and 75 eating at the tables. It was crazy. The staff was working so hard - visibly in a mental zone to handle a day full of lines that big. I really have to commend them for their hard work.

The deal was - at this store and most across the nation - bring in a non-perishable food item and you get a burrito for free. Very compelling to me as a consumer and a nice thing for them to do in general.

the original chipotle store was smoking tonight. the place was packed - line out the door - even at 9:00 at night. i wonder what their sales per store and sales per square feet and sales per $ lease looks like. i’ll bet this location is pretty good on those kinds of measures.

ezra and i chatted about life, learning, and locations today.

i need to post more photos.

nice lunch with al and ezra today discussing a variety of things including Rasmus’ presentation about php security and XSS and XSFR. also, the guy sitting at the table next to us was talking about templates in joomla. which was kinda funny.