Charles Hodgkins has written about music for over fifteen years and began Burritoeater in 2003. He recently reviewed is 1000th and final burrito, pictured above. Photo by Jonathan Lifeson Smith.
What was the food highlight of your year?
Without question, my bow-out burrito at La Espiga de Oro on December 7 (conveniently, also my birthday). I was at about 980 burrito reviews when I announced my Autumn 2013 farewell tour spanning a handful of San Francisco taquerias, with the clear intention of calling it a day with Burritoeater once I reached 1000 reviews. #1000 was a true epic: 9.25 mustaches of carne asada-laden, spice-fueled, avocado-driven radness, made all the more memorable by the surrounding presence of several amigos — one of whom turned the whole silly spectacle into a featured piece on KALW radio. Perhaps I’m a kook for making such a hullaballoo out of putting my burrito review site out to pasture, but to review a thousand burritos and not actively seek out validation from my adoring public seems like a foolishly missed opportunity to cement my status as a local folk hero (or a lunkheaded stooge, whichever).
What was the music highlight of your year?
Among my top discoveries this year, I’ve been wearing out William Tyler’s instrumental folk masterpiece Impossible Truth since first hearing it several months back, and I’ve been listening to a hell of a lot of No Joy, whose two LPs shoot the new My Bloody Valentine record right out of the sky as far as I’m concerned. And the random act of dialing up Bringing It All Back Home while walking through Parque del Retiro in Madrid one day in May sent me on a summer-long Dylan binge that even helped eventually make sense of Self Portrait for me. But topping the heap was the opportunity to catch five performances by singer/songwriter/guitarist/rad dude Will Johnson: two solo living room shows in the Bay Area, one Overseas show at Bottom of the Hill, and most special of all, two hellacious Centro-matic shows in the band’s home country of Texas.
Was there a moment when food and music came together in a memorable way?
The time toward the end of the year when my friend Colby asked me to write about food and music at the same time. I yammered on way too long about both, albeit individually.