Third Place: Qdoba

As the Cambridge weather nears freezing and our workloads call for all-nighters, one thing remains constant in the life of nearly every Harvard student's diet: the burrito.  In this mini-series, we’ll be posting detailed reviews and rankings of grilled chicken burritos from four different establishments (Boloco, Chipotle, Qdoba, and Felipe's) while judging on criteria ranging from temperature to tortilla thickness. By the end, we hope to have made the lives of inebriated wanderers and starving studiers a little easier, while offering an easy tool for Reading Period procrastination—burrito rankings.

Burrito #2 Qdoba’s grilled chicken burrito:

Includes: Chicken, salsa, black beans, cilantro-lime rice, and cheese—in a tortilla, of course.

Price: $6.29

-300 points for the priciest burrito.

Weight: 1 lb, 6 oz.

+1,000 points for the heaviest burrito! Seriously, this resembled a small child.

Tortilla: Super chewy and thick, almost doughy.

-100 points for the tortilla’s excessive stretchiness, but +200 points for a flavor-absorbent quality.

Rice: Very dry. Very boring. Very large amount.

-100 points for taste, +100 points for the pleasing purple color it became adjacent to the black beans.

Guacamole: $1.49

-50 points for making us pay, +50 points for not being the most expensive.

Chicken: No spice or flavor to be found.

-300 points for boring poultry.

Cheese: Seemingly nonexistent.

-200 points. Cheese is important!

Extras: Corn salsa (tasty), salsa verde (mild), chipotle sauce (medium), hot sauce (hot), and sour cream.

+300 points for catering to diverse palates.

Hours of operation: 11 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. Sunday through Wednesday, 11 p.m. to 12 a.m. Thursday through Saturday.

+300 points for being open late, -100 for not being open late enough.

Deals and steals: Annual Rice and Bean Pot Eating Contest—of which Harvard students are reigning champions—and Dice Day Wednesdays

+800 points for giving speedy burrito eaters a chance to win a trip to Mexico in the eating contest, -100 for not renewing the by-one-get-one-free coupons that were on the back of tickets from the Harvard Box Office.

The bottom line: There was nothing particularly special about Qdoba’s burrito: the rice was bland, the chicken was bland, and the cheese hardly existed. While the meal was four cents more expensive than Boloco’s burrito, it included a better variety of sauces and three more ounces. It definitely wasn’t difficult to stop eating—always a bad sign—but the burrito wasn’t quite as disappointing Boloco.

Total points: 1,400

Final Ranking: 3/4