Downtown burritos

We’re not sure how we missed this for so long. Our California-Style Burrito Sensors are usually carefully attuned to the proximity of tightly packed meat and beans. (We rejoiced with the arrival of Taco Del Mar at River Park Square, then went nuts when De Leon’s opened a satellite bistro on Lincoln last year.) But on Jan. 22, a new burrito joint slipped in under the radar at the old Taste of Asia/Zip’s on Third Avenue.

ATILANO’S is spacious, in more ways than one. Take a look at the menu. There are 75 items on there — burritos, tacos, tortas, tostadas, combos, specials, kids’ stuff — plus 14 side orders, including (strangely) tater tots and French fries. There are even seven breakfast burritos choices, like machaca, chorizo and bacon. And it’s all cheap as hell. Lunch with a giant paper-wrapped burrito and a medium horchata will run you just a little over $6.

“Have you ever been to San Diego?” a guy in line asks me. I tell him I went to college in southern California. “These are the closest I’ve had to what they make down there,” he says.

Patricia Gonzalez doesn’t put a regional tag on the food they serve. Just Mexican, she says. The 19-year-old is one of three employees at Atilano’s, which is owned by Atilano Gonzalez, who operates Atilano’s I in Coos Bay, Ore. (The Spokane store is Atilano’s III; the second store, also in Oregon, closed.) Patricia commands the counter while cousin Efrain and another man work the kitchen and tend to the steady clanging of the bell at the drive-thru window. “Almost everybody is family, except for the guy in the back,” she says. “But we treat him like he’s part of the family.”

Patricia says they’ll need two more employees before they can live up to the ambitiously optimistic hours printed on their take-out menu: Fridays and Saturdays, open until 3 am. As it is, they’re staying open until midnight seven days a week. Patricia says it’s often busy.

At least there’s plenty of seating. The dining room is weirdly huge, with 40 chairs and five benches. All look like they were bought used from some fast-food stop in the mid-’80s — pink, turquoise, stiff, uncomfortable. In between are acres of empty space. One small chair/table combo sits all alone. Elsewhere, two chairs are arranged side by side, facing a wall.

The mise-en-scene is a little disjointed, but it works as it recalls so many of the little family-owned burrito joints that dot places like southern California. “This place has to survive,” says the guy from the San Diego, as he steps up to the counter.

— JOEL SMITH

Atilano’s, 725 W. Third Ave., is open Mon-Sat 6 am-midnight, Sun 8 am-midnight. Call 838-7677.