Ryan Wisniewski
Layers upon layers of cheese sauce and toppings create nacho nirvana.
Madison’s getting a lot of customize-your-entree fast-food operations these days. The San Francisco “Mission” style of burrito at Mr. Torta’s Mexican Subs closely resembles the style served at Chipotle. But in terms of overstuffing both burritos and diners, Mr. Torta’s laps the field.
The opening of Mr. Torta’s does not remedy the 2012 closure of Antojitos el Toril, a more traditional Mexican restaurant, for the Cottage Grove Road area. Mr. Torta’s (which takes the place of Papa Bear’s BBQ) isn’t a typical taqueria; the menu goes in a more Mexican-American direction. There are seven meats to choose from, and seven delivery methods for consuming them.
Column A on the menu board consists of subs, burritos, tacos (two to an order), quesadillas, taco salad and nachos.
You might wonder why they’re called subs and not tortas, as in the restaurant’s name. All I can say is that they come on hoagie-style rolls, somewhat resembling a bolillo roll but really more like a hoagie.
Column B, the meats, lists barbacoa beef, pork carnitas, chicken carnitas, Philly steak, spicy chorizo, spicy chorizo with bacon, and fajita steak. Chatter on the restaurant’s Facebook page indicates that vegetarians have been able to successfully order custom non-meat dishes from the vegetable add-ons.
The beauty of this style of menu is that you’ll get what you want, creating the whole dish from top to bottom. The curse of this style is ordering too much. Keep it simple. The tongs and ladles at Mr. Torta’s hold a lot, and it’s easy to overstuff your entree.
A chicken carnitas burrito with rice, chopped lettuce, pico de gallo and jalapeño cheese sauce was very, very full. On a subsequent visit, my fajita steak burrito was as close to spherical as I’ve ever seen a Mission-style burrito. There was easily enough meat for two reasonably portioned burritos, which makes me wonder what a burrito with optional extra meat would look like. Neither the chicken nor the steak came off as particularly delectable cuts, but the chicken at least offered some browning and a little crispy texture.
The combination of bacon and chorizo is more than a little inspired, though I wouldn’t order it in a burrito or sub; that would be an inadvisable amount of salt. I had the chorizo with bacon in taco form, and even that was a bit much. After adding salsa or spicy ranch dressing, it’s a blowout. Try it in the quesadilla. I tried the Philly steak that way, and the result is toasty and its fillings are distributed well. (From my observation, the Philly steak and the fajita steak seem to be nearly identical.)
Some more traditional add-ons would be a big plus. What I would have given for some simple lime wedges and sliced radishes to put on my pork carnitas tacos.
If you like saucy, though, Mr. Torta’s is your jam. There’s sour cream and that spicy ranch dressing, a spicy cheese sauce and a spicy sort of Thousand Island deal. And there are salsas galore, including one with diced mango. The guacamole is smooth; my move is to order it on the side to keep the flavor fresh.
There’s one killer item on this menu: the nachos. When you see a layer of chips, then a layer of jalapeño cheese sauce, then more chips and more cheese sauce and shredded cheese go into the toaster before you even get to your chosen toppings, you know you’re in for a good time. I liked the fajitas steak on top; in this dish the chorizo would also add some zing. The chicken carnitas would also be good here.
A problem at Mr. Torta’s is that most of the meats are kept waiting in a bath of juice, where the flavors become indistinct, muddied. The juices also have a tendency to leak through even the big starchy torta roll. The generous fillings plus the addition of a sauce or salsa means most dishes sog out before you can appreciate flavors and textures.
Excess is not entirely foreign to Mexican cuisine. Think the salsa-soaked torta ahogada, or the hot dog-stuffed torta cubana. Even corn on the cob comes slathered in mayo and cheese at Mexican food stalls. But it’s hard to enjoy soggy leftovers, and there will most likely be leftovers. Mr. Torta’s feed-you-till-you-burst M.O., while generous and inexpensive, probably should be dialed back.
Mr. Torta’s Mexican Subs
4527 Cottage Grove Rd., Madison; 608-467-2019;
mrtortas.com; 11 am-9 pm daily; $3-$9
