burritos

The word begins in Late Latin. 'Burricus,' attested in 5th-century texts, meant a small horse or pony and may derive from Gaulish roots referring to a shaggy, rough-coated animal. In Iberian Spanish the word contracted into 'burro,' the ordinary word for donkey, and the diminutive 'burrito' simply meant a small or young donkey. The suffix '-ito' did what it always does in Spanish: it made the thing smaller and, often, more affectionate.

The food called a burrito has its roots in northern Mexico, particularly in the states of Chihuahua and Sonora. Flour tortillas — distinct from the corn tortillas of central Mexico — had been the staple bread of northern ranchers and miners since the 17th century. By the late 19th century, workers and vendors in the Chihuahua region were wrapping cooked beans, meat, or rice in tortillas rolled tight for carrying. The earliest written record of burrito as a food item appears in an 1895 Chihuahuan dictionary, which defines it as food wrapped in a tortilla for traveling.

One popular account locates the modern burrito with Juan Méndez, a street vendor in Ciudad Juárez who during the Mexican Revolution years of 1910 to 1917 transported his food on a donkey and kept it warm by wrapping it in large flour tortillas. Whether Méndez named the dish or simply made it famous, the association between the rolled tortilla and the pack animal the workers called a burrito was already in the air. The border between Ciudad Juárez and El Paso carried the food and its name into Texas, then west.

The Mission burrito, the large tightly wrapped American variant, was developed in San Francisco's Mission District in the 1960s, with El Faro restaurant often credited for the style. By the 1990s, chains like Chipotle had standardized the format and exported it globally. 'Burritos' is now a menu word in London, Tokyo, and Sydney, carrying its little-donkey meaning invisibly inside it, unknown to nearly everyone who orders one.