Like a reverse Cinderella story, Chipotle Mexican Grill has taken a fall from meme-ified grace after numerous health scandals across its locations in the US. According to reports, around 430 people have been sickened from the E. coli and norovirus outbreaks linked to the once beloved burrito purveyor.
Most recently, nearly 140 students in Boston endured nausea and vomiting after dining at a Chipotle near the Boston College campus. This follows a string of Chipotle-related instances of E. coli in six separate states—California, Washington, Oregon, New York, Minnesota, and Ohio—that affected around 53 people. At least 45 people in Minnesota also had the unique experience of contracting Salmonella from the restaurant last August, and that was around the same time 189 people who visited the Simi Valley, California location were sickened with norovirus. Since, analysts have reported Chipotle’s stocks dropping along with its revenue. But die-hard fans of the chain still believe in the sentiment “Chipotle is life,” despite the bad news that eating at the restaurant could very well be a threat to theirs.
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So on the day after Chipotle announced that they have been subpoenaed by the federal government as part of a criminal investigation into one of these incidents, I headed to the once-hallowed institution of up-charged guacamole to interview intrepid eaters about their allegiance to the chain. To be honest, I felt unsure if even I myself could resist the temptation of a burrito bowl once inside.
The first thing I noticed at the Chipotle on St. Marks Place in Manhattan when I arrived at peak lunch hours was the health grade: A. The second thing I noticed was its distinct emptiness. I breezed through the long, vacant queue (presumably designed for the packed lines of carnitas-loving patrons back in the good ol’ days) and asked the woman behind the register about the lack of customers. “Do you think people are scared?” I asked. She conceded that it’s possible, but was probably trained not to say more than that. I hesitated over the chicken burrito bowl but ultimately left the register empty-handed.
The barren landscape of the St. Marks Chipotle
The few customers in the place, however, looked unafraid and unbothered, until I bothered them. Just as a group of four students was about to sit down and enjoy their burritos and bowls, I approached their table. “How do you feel about the recent outbreak of E. coli and norrovirus at Chipotle restaurants?” I asked. One young man in a sweatshirt bearing the letters of a fraternity stopped peeling the foil off his burrito and set it down. The girl across from him chimed in: “We were just talking about this,” she said. “I told him that I think [the food-illness outbreaks] are still a thing, but—”
Like my mom always says: If you’re good to the Chipotle, the Chipotle is good to you.
“I didn’t care,” the sweatshirt guy said.
Another guy at the table eating a steak bowl, who told me his name was “Jhimmyly Charles”—he took my phone and spelled it into the recorder—was eager to be quoted in this article. He said, “You kind of forget about it, you know? People just look over [E. coli and norrovirus contamination] for the taste… I guess I won’t find out until I get sick.”
A second girl in the group seemed to be trying to convey to me that she had been forced—or at least peer-pressured by her friends—into being there. “I don’t really eat at Chipotle,” she said. “If I were to choose a place to eat, it would not be here.”
I wandered towards the back of the restaurant and found another group of friends just finishing up their lunch. Here, I received more insight into the mind of a ride-or-die Chipotle eater: “Like my mom always says,” a woman at the table told me, “if you’re good to the Chipotle, the Chipotle is good to you.”
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The last people I talked to were two men on their lunch break; they work nearby. One of the guys, who asked to remain anonymous because he promised his mother that he would no longer patronize the disgraced chain, was eating a chicken burrito, and the other, Ryan, was there for moral support. “To be honest, I’ve been coming here for three days week for a month or two,” said the anonymous man. “I haven’t died yet, and I eat it enough that I would have been patient zero.”
Indeed, he was alive, and his burrito looked delicious. As I left the restaurant, I took one last look at the fluorescent-lit menu and the far less risk-averse people who were enjoying their meals. Maybe I was the foolish one.
