If you’re like me, you frequent a certain restaurant because they serve a particular meal you develop severe cravings for and can barely wait to indulge again. Do you have a restaurant like that? I certainly do. A few of them, in fact.

Once I’m enamored with something, I order it each time I visit that restaurant. Forget the special of the evening or the vegetable risotto they’re known for or the Eggplant Parmesan everyone raves about. I’m narrow-minded once I’ve discovered something that tickles my taste buds.

When I visit Jason’s, my favorite restaurant in Marin, you can bet I’m ordering the spicy Cajun pasta, minus the sausage, please. But first a nice lemon drop sets the tone of the evening. Yep, love me a good lemon drop.

At Pho Viet, I must have the Vietnamese vegetarian pho. If they ever close down, I might have to harm myself, or on second thought, someone else. It’s that good. And Celia’s serves the spiciest Camerones a la Diabla on a platter-sized plate. The common denominator at these eateries is that my meal is consistently awesome.

And then there’s La Azteca, once my favorite burrito joint (once being the operative word). I discovered it when my friend Sharon lived in that neighborhood. But my first experience there wasn’t stellar when my vegetarian burrito contained chicken.

Then my friend Loretta and I started frequenting the restaurant, as it’s also close to her home. Whenever we’ve eaten in La Azteca, everything is grand. We stuff ourselves silly with chips, salsa and our respective burritos. But when ordering food to go, that’s where it gets loony.

I estimate I’ve ordered takeout about a dozen times and I’d say my order has been wrong 75% of the time. No lie. Just ask Loretta. Now don’t get me wrong; that didn’t stopped me from continuing to get my burrito-fix. But I admit my resolve is weakening. Still, it’s now become comical.

There’s the time I ordered my vegetarian burrito with no lettuce inside. It was inside. I ordered one with guacamole and sour cream on the side. They were inside. So I ordered the next one without guacamole and sour cream. They were inside. Once I paid for a container of of salsa but never got it. You get my drift. So a month ago we mentioned this to La Azteca’s manager, who apologized profusely and personally took our order.

Normally I’m a trusting person, but not this time. Before leaving with my burrito, I cut it open. And there staring back at me was an abundance of guacamole and sour cream. Are you kidding me here?! Did the cook have something against me? Was he having mini strokes at exactly the time my order was submitted? Somehow he wasn’t grasping that I don’t like guacamole and sour cream inside my burrito.

Anyway, I laid off La Azteca burritos after that. Then last week Loretta and I ventured back in. I believe in second chances and third and fourth and fifth…but mostly I was craving a burrito. Loretta ordered her usual steak burrito and I bravely ordered my usual, even refraining from cutting into it at the restaurant. Very trusting, wouldn’t you say?

And lo and behold, when I got home, my veggie burrito had the guacamole and sour cream on the side! And no lettuce, to boot. How lucky was I? Loretta, however, was not so fortunate. She not only had no steak in her burrito, boldly labeled Asada, but it came with a big chunk of plastic inside.

Steak-less burrito

Looks like we’re now on the hunt for a new burrito joint.