Nothing gives me greater pleasure, as a California native, than to discover a new burrito shop. I'm not talking about the kind of burritos served on a plate in a restaurant. Those are fairly common in Tokyo, and anyway they are confusing to me (do you eat them with a knife and fork?). I'm talking about the kind of huge burrito that comes wrapped in tinfoil so you can eat it with your hands, alone or with friends, at the counter or as takeout, and without any of the fuss of having to choose appetizers or spring for headache-inducing frozen cocktails.
Rainbow Burritos (2-12-11 Shinjuku, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo; (090) 9834-4842), which opened last November, serves that kind of burrito. It's a tiny takeaway counter on a tiny street in the heart of Shinjuku 2-chome, run by a Japanese woman nicknamed Chubabe. Chubabe has plenty of experience cooking for crowds: She ran lesbian bar Chestnut & Squirrel for eight years. But what about her burrito-making credentials? Her Los Angeles-born Mexican-American girlfriend's grandmother supplied the recipes.
There are three kinds of burrito on the menu: carne asada (beef), pollo rojo (chicken) and veggie. My favorite was the pollo rojo, stuffed with shredded chicken that had spent three days in a slow-cooker with earthy chipotle (smoke-dried jalapeño pepper). The veggie one, which is purely vegetarian, is a little Japanese-inflected, with age-dōfu (fried tofu) along with avocado, rice and black beans — but definitely satisfying nonetheless.