Chipotle Mexican Grill

I was not sure about trying Chipotle when they first came to Sioux Falls in December of 2020.
The food poisoning stories I heard on the news stuck in my head pretty vividly.
To some, those stories are probably ancient history, but not to me. In 2018 Chipotle paid $25 million to resolve criminal charges accusing the chain of serving tainted food between 2015-2018 sickening over 1100 people.
The Ohio Department of Heath reported a Clostridium perfringens outbreak and in Virginia a Chipotle restaurant was suspected to be the center of a norovirus outbreak. In 2020 when they opened here in town, we decided to give it a shot.
My sons then dubbed the restaurant Shitpotle.
The meat was gristly and we got two bags of chips, half of the chips in each bag were stale enough that you could fold them in half, they were inedible… perhaps better as chewing gum.
In the last 3 years we have never been back. As a part of my journey to hit every food joint on 10th Street / Arrowhead Parkway between the viaduct and Veterans Parkway (Amazingly I counted over 50 food joints on that stretch of road) I decided to give chipotle a second chance. The store front and restaurant itself are absolutely beautiful! It is clean and modern.
Very inviting! Service here, not bad, not great.
I went in at 8:00 on my way home from a long day of work.
I realize that’s pretty late, but they’re open until 10… another 2 hours.
I felt like they were ready to call it a night already.
They had some chairs flipped up and it looked like they were doing some end of day cleaning.
Kind of made feel like that jerk that walks in 5 minutes before closing, so not the best experience in that way. Still kills me every time, prepackaged tortillas.
Qdoba is guilty of this too.
If you want a fresh pressed tortilla, you’ve got to go to Pancheros, they win best tortilla hands down. Got home to eat my meal.
The burrito was actually pretty good.
No gristle this time.
I had asked for their hottest sauce, it’s not hot but the burrito itself was good.
Again with the chips though! I ordered chips and queso to give a second chance.
They only had large orders of chips and queso left which I don’t get at all… can’t you just put less chips in the bag? Or was this another sign that the restaurant and workers were checked out for the night already? Whatever, I paid for a large.
Chips were stale but not so stale you could fold them in half.
I did have some that looked burnt and I assume were inedible (I wasn’t going to try).
Chef Ramsay would say, “Where are your standards?” Queso was on point though! Really really good! While this was much better than my first visit to a Chipotle 3 years ago, in the end, Pancheros is still my favorite burrito chain with Qdoba to follow, Chipotle a distant 3rd out of 3.
It will probably be a least another 3 years before I go to another Chipotle.

Owner response

Boyfriend and I Stopped by at 9:30pm after volleyball.
They close at 10.
We each order a burrito bowl, one with chicken and one with steak.
We each got brown rice, both beans and queso.
We wanted sour cream, cheese, lettuce, and corn salsa but were told they were all out.
I asked if there was more sour cream and cheese in the cooler and was told No.
Had we known they were out of these toppings we wouldn’t have even ordered anything to begin with.
We ended up paying and I noticed I was charge $2.84 for guacamole which neither of us ordered so I asked for that to be refunded.
This meal cost $24.60 (including the guac which we did not order).
Ridiculous price for what we got considering they were “out” of multiple toppings.

This location gets skimpier every visit.
It was awesome when it opened but now feels too overpriced.
The price to guac ratio is getting insulting.
At least the food is usually fresh and the facility clean.
This time I ordered a bowl just to find out they were out of silverware.
Thanks for the heads up.