Chipotle’s new meat is only sold in Sacramento and Ohio. Should you try the brisket?

When we were in college, my locally-born friend “Sac Mike” ate at the Chipotle Mexican Grill in downtown San Luis Obispo at least six times a week. He tipped every time, befriended the workers and occasionally got hooked up with free BOGO burritos — always chicken.

I can’t defend the dietary choices of Sac Mike, who moved to the Bay Area after graduation. Were he still around our hometown, though, I’d tell him to at least change his order up.

Chipotle’s new brisket — only available in some Sacramento locations and throughout Cincinnati as of Monday — is surprisingly good. It’s by far the most visually appealing meat in the steam tables staring back from the other side of the glass, with blackened edges and glistening auburn centers that shine in a way others don’t.

The normal question when ordering brisket at a Southern barbecue joint is “fatty or lean?” At Chipotle, the answer is “yes.” While it’s easily the highest-calorie meat on the menu, the brisket comes diced in flat little rhombuses with ruby interiors and crispy fringes, hardly the kind of juicy slab that seeps through parchment paper onto a metal tray.

Brisket is a thick, muscular cut from cattle breastbone that takes a notoriously long time to cook, and Chipotle smokes its beef for 16 hours, according to a media spokesman. Chipotle’s meats are cooked at one of three domestic facilities before being transported to a distribution center and on to restaurants, per the company’s 2018 sustainability report.

The brisket then sits in a spice mix (the marinade includes cumin, garlic and coriander, according to a sign inside) before being charred daily on the grill and finished in a sauce made from “Mexican peppers.” That char is the best thing the brisket has going for it, because the flavor isn’t quite strong enough to avoid getting lost in Chipotle’s industry-shifting, enormous burritos.

It’s easy to taste the cumin from the marinade on the meat and surrounding cilantro-lime brown rice. Throw corn salsa, pinto beans, lettuce, shredded cheese and sour cream into the flour tortilla, and eventually it all just turns into a mishmash. If you were to order half brisket and half of another meat (a well-known Chipotle trick to get more meat from generous scoopers), you’d likely feel the former’s textural punch but have trouble separating its flavor from, say, the barbacoa.

It’s too bad the meat’s taste isn’t stronger, because it’s actually got a nice smoke to it. It’s just hard to isolate. Chipotle’s less-popular taco plate, with minimal add-ons, is the way to go in this case: a simple mix of pico de gallo, fajita veggies and rice in a smaller tortilla lets the brisket’s flavor shine through more than it did in the burrito, and presumably more than it would in a bowl.

Brisket’s long cooking time seems antithetical to Chipotle’s fast-casual assembly line concept, and maybe that fresh char, flavorful salsa and jumble of other ingredients hide the sins of reheating meat. But Chipotle’s chicken, carnitas and other beef are centrally slow-cooked as well using sous vide machines, and if the Newport Beach-based chain’s 2,700 locations worldwide are any indication, it seems to be working out alright.

Does Chipotle’s brisket compete with that of Back 40 Texas BBQ or Roxie Deli & Barbeque? No. But for what it is and what it’s trying to be, it hits pretty good marks. Once you’re in the door, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a better option. We’ll see what Sac Mike has to say next time he comes to town.

This story was originally published December 1, 2020 at 6:06 AM.