SACRAMENTO, Calif. — For the second time in a year, Chipotle Mexican Grill is testing a new meat option in the chain's Sacramento and Cincinnati restaurants. As with the last new meat, the quality is relative.
After introducing brisket in November 2020 (I thought it was fine but unremarkable), Chipotle launched pollo asado in those two markets earlier this month. I don't know exactly why Chipotle keeps picking Sacramento and Cincinnati, but here's my somewhat-cynical guess: They're both decent-sized markets with a usable sample size, but not big enough to matter should the product bomb.
Whatever. We'll take it. A friend and I trekked down to our neighborhood Chipotle last Wednesday to try the new protein in a burrito and a salad (for anyone who's never ordered a Chipotle salad, it's essentially a burrito bowl with a base layer of spinach).
Chipotle's pollo asado is rubbed with cumin, guajillo peppers and coriander before being grilled and finished with garlic, chili peppers, lime and cilantro, according to a company news release. It has more kick than the standard chicken option, which I learned in the course of this review is supposed to be chicken adobo, as well as 30 more calories per serving and a 65-cent surcharge ($7.75 vs $8.40 at the location I visited).
Yet, a critical component of pollo asado is marination in orange juice, which adds citrus flavor and acidity. Chipotle doesn't list OJ as one of the marinade ingredients and employees working the counter didn't know if it was being used, but I spied a cook pour out maybe a cup for an industrial-sized batch of something he was mixing.
If that orange juice went into the pollo asado, it wasn't enough. The cumin, coriander, garlic and peppers don't quite have the same dyeing effect as commonly used achiote paste, either. The heat from the peppers is there, and my friend picked up a taste of lime, but pieces of chicken isolated from the rest of the burrito or salad were weirdly bland.
Chipotle's assembly-line entrees aren't supposed to be eaten one ingredient at a time, of course, but it's hard to get too jazzed about a new protein that doesn't add much beyond a little heat. There's always room for reinvention — Chipotle popularized the now-ubiquitous Mission burritos, after all — yet that doesn't seem to be the intent here.
It's pollo asado the way Chipotle is a Mexican Grill, or the way macaroni and cheese with ham is a British carbonara. It's a Sacramento special, it's different and it might be a slight upgrade over the base chicken adobo.
If you eat at Chipotle regularly and don't mind a few extra cents and calories, maybe it's worth trying. But there's no mistaking this pollo asado for that served at Tacoa Tacos y Tequila, Taqueria Los Compadres or El Bramido Restaurant & Bar.
