We pit Burritoville versus Blockheads Burritos

Race to My Place: Burritoville vs. Blockheads

We pit Burritoville versus Blockheads Burritos
We pit Burritoville versus Blockheads Burritos

We’ve all had those days. It’s 7 PM, you’ve just come home from work, exhausted, and the last thing you want to do is cook up some food- especially if you’re feeding more than one mouth.  You consider ordering delivery, but you’re starving and don’t want to wait an hour for your food to get there.  That’s where we come in.

For each installment of Race to My Place, we pit two restaurants with similar cuisines, estimated delivery times, and prices against each other to see whose delivery reigns supreme! We will compare delivery speed, packaging and presentation, quality and taste, and value.  This week, our contestants are Burritoville and Blockheads.

Ever since the advent of the “food blogger” there has been an ongoing debate as to whether LA or NYC has better food. Our lack of decent Mexican food has always been a point of contention for New Yorkers, one that LA-ers never fail to bring up.  Today we will test that theory right here in Battery Park City with a Burrito Race!

It’s important to note that Blockheads does have a burrito lunch special that comes with chips, salsa and a drink for $8.95. In order to fairly compare the two restaurants, however, we had to order the exact same items from both places. We ordered Chicken Fajita Burritos, Guacamole and Chips, and two Diet Pepsi’s from each.

Burritoville Burritos
Chicken Fajita Burritoville Burrito

Delivery Speed: Burritoville
It took Blockheads over 3x the amount of time it took Burritoville to deliver our burritos. We received our Burritoville delivery in 18 minutes and finished our food before Blockheads even left their premises.

Blockheads clocked in after 58 minutes (most embarrassing!), and to make matters worse, the delivery boy was too lazy to take the elevator upstairs to bring the food to our door.  In fact, he lied over the phone and said he didn’t have his ID, and then was dumb enough to have his wallet open with his ID in it when we got downstairs. For those of you who have an hour or less for your lunch break, avoid Blockheads, or be sure to order ahead of time.

Packaging and Presentation: Tie
While neither restaurant’s packaging was very special, Blockheads’ burritos came in the standard round tin containers, which wasn’t the best vessel for delivering a burrito. The weirdest part, though, was that their burritos came with the rice and beans in separate containers on the side. This was really peculiar as I’ve never seen a deconstructed burrito before, and it seemed like a waste of plastic. It was also a waste of our our time, seeing as we had to attempt to build our own burrito (not easy when the tortilla is the consistency of a waterlogged pancake). Their chips came prepackaged in a sealed plastic bag that was a little hard to open, but definitely looked nicer than Burritoville’s chip pile.

Burritoville individually wrapped each burrito in foil and paper. This made their burritos easy to hold and eat, and was ideal for storing any leftovers. They also included two free bags of chips and salsa, which was a really nice touch.  Burritoville would have won this category as well, but they made one fatal mistake… they failed to deliver one of our Diet Pepsi’s! We had to dock points for that delivery no-no.

Quality & Taste: Burritoville
Burritoville had the better tasting food hands down.  First of all, you have the tortilla options of white, wheat, sun-dried tomato or none; cheddar, Monterey Jack or soy cheese; black or refried beans; sour cream or tofu sour cream; and hot or mild salsa.

Blockheads only gave us the option of white or wheat tortillas, white or brown rice, and tofu sour cream, although you could add vegan soy cheese at an extra cost.

Burritoville’s Chicken Fajita Burrito actually had the typical Fajita elements in it like red peppers and caramelized onions. All the flavors came together in a fajita-burrito explosion, and it was delicious!  The cheese was a decadent melted blend of cheddar and Monterey Jack, and it was the perfect texture to balance out the chicken, rice, beans, guacamole, salsa and sour cream.

As I mentioned before, Blockheads’ Chicken Fajita Burrito came with the rice, beans, guacamole, sour cream, and salsa on the side. In theory, it’s nice that they let us choose how much fat and carbohydrate we’d like to add to our burrito, but when you have a tortilla filled with nothing but lettuce, tomatoes, chicken and sauce in a loose tin container, there is absolutely nothing there to stop the burrito from becoming a giant soggy mess. Each burrito sat in a puddle of lettuce juice, which was exactly as appetizing as it sounds. It was difficult enough to get a bite into your mouth with a knife and fork, let alone reassemble it with the rest of the ingredients.

Burritoville’s chips were nothing special, and their guacamole was a little too heavy on the cilantro and red onion.  Blockheads’ chips and guacamole, on the other hand, were about as good as delivery chips and guac can get in Lower Manhattan, but not good enough to make up for their inedible burrito.

Value: Burritoville
Here is the breakdown:

Burritoville
Chicken Fajita Burrito (with Guacamole): $8.75
Chips & Guacamole: $6.99

Blockheads
Chicken Fajita Burrito (with Guacamole): $13
Chips & Guacamole: $4.50

Of course, as we noted before, Blockheads does have a $8.95 lunch special which is much closer to Burritoville’s $8.75 price tag. However, considering the quality of the burrito we ate today, that lunch special isn’t even tempting. I think it’s safe to say that today’s race did not bring us any closer to finding West Coast quality Mexican food in New York, and it’s even safer to say that Lower Manhattan is probably not the place to look.

Blockheads
4 World Financial Center,
New York, NY 10281-1023
(212) 619-8226

Burritoville
80 Nassau Street,
New York, NY 10038
(212) 766-2020‎

About Jenn

Jenn was raised in Battery Park City and as a child one of her favorite places was Picasso Pizza. Being older and wiser, she now is a connoisseur of all the fantastic restaurants and bars in the area as the food/culture writer for BatteryParkCity.com.

1 thought on “Race to My Place: Burritoville vs. Blockheads

  1. I found this review extremely helpful and i cannot wait to go to these spots to try them out! Gracias!!

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