Tortilla

I usually think Tortilla is one of the best of the many options for burritos, tacos and the like. I’d say Chilango wins, but Tortilla are better than the rest. Their meats are quite juicy, their toppings fresh, their sauces interesting: the food is pretty good. Usually.
At this particular branch, I keep having less than satisfactory experiences. First of all, it’s loud and busy, owing to its location beside Clapham Junction. I often go on the way home after work for a quick dinner, and of course many others have the same plan. But pumping in loud (awful) music just adds to the problem; the staff can’t hear me and I can’t hear them. Mistakes are made, orders are wrong, confusion is rife. This happens more often than not.
One other bad experience thankfully has only happened once. Despite a torrential downpour outside, my tacos (2 orders of 3) were put in a box in a flimsy paper bag. Now I can’t fault the bag, really, it’s what they use and it works for them — not their fault there was a rare thunderstorm — but of course it disintegrated. What I *can* fault however, is the fact that the taco box wasn’t closed properly. The lid was basically placed on, meaning when my dinner did tumble, it flew from the box into a puddle. No dinner. Not cool. Customer service did get in touch with me (following a disgruntled rant on Twitter about packaging) and sent me 2 free burrito/​taco vouchers. This was very nice of them! So again, I cannot fault the restaurant as a whole — just the specific actions of the CJ staff on that day.
So feeling happier about Tortilla once again, I head back to the CJ branch with my free taco voucher. The staff can’t hear me; I get more highly-​salted carnitas tacos than I wanted (chicken is better and what I asked for), I don’t get the topping I requested, and then the girl adding my toppings doesn’t understand the word «lettuce». Is it my accent? Her colleague managed to point her at the correct green stuff. then the strangest of all: she proceeds to painstakingly pick 3 individual shreds of lettuce per taco. I ask for more, she doesn’t understand. I ask for something else, she looks at me blankly. I say my tacos are only half full, she looks at me blankly. I give up, and wait the 5 extra minutes it takes for the cashier to find the «free taco voucher» button. Eesh.
Basically, I am falling out of love with Tortilla. It’s not bad food when you get what you ordered! But at Clapham Junction, all the arguing with staff (which makes me feel like a horrible person) is not worth the 3 barely filled tacos at the end. I will go to a Tortilla again, but I probably will walk past the CJ branch next time en route to something more worthwhile.

When you need to hold your burrito with both hands as you eat it, you know it’s going to be good!
I was shocked with the 1* review from Erica so I thought I’d try and bring the average up a bit.
I’ve never had an issue with the meat to rice ratio, but maybe that’s because I order extra meat!
Burritos are always juicy and flavorsome, although I wish places would stop trying to serve me raw onion as part of a salad. I’d rather dig my eye out with a spoon than eat raw onion.
That being said, there’s enough edible ingredients to get in my burrito without having to worry about the onions.

London has been a bit of a Mexican food wasteland in my experience, and so I didn’t have great expectations of Tortilla, but I loved it. The meat has flavour! The guac has flavour!
As a nacho-​lover I like to get a naked burrito — a bowl full of burrito fillings — with a side of tortilla chips. I’ve tried the pork and beef, and while the chicken looks tasty it is cubed rather than shredded and harder to scoop up on a corn chip, so I’m probably gonna stick with pork and beef.
I really like the mild salsa for the freshness — diced tomato, onion, coriander, but need some spice too, so I get both mild and hot, which makes my burrito bowl just right. I feel like goldilocks, minus the bears.