About Kevin Foxcroft

Who's writing this

I'm Kevin. I work in the field — hard hat, hi-vis, early mornings — and the work moves around. Home is Reno–Sparks, so most trips start on I-80 heading west over the Sierra, and the rest start at an airport. Somewhere in there I figured out that the best twenty minutes of a work day is usually the twenty minutes I spend eating a burrito somewhere I've never been.

I don't have a food background. I'm not from the cultures whose food I'm eating and writing about. I'm a guest at these counters, and that shapes how I write: I describe what I ate, I use the restaurant's own words for it, and I leave the history and the bigger claims to the people and sources who can actually make them.

This exists because “best burritos near me” is useless when you're on a clock. I want you to know exactly what to order and be able to go.

Why a Nevada guy has a California top 5

Fair question, and the honest answer is geography plus a job. Living in Reno–Sparks means the Bay Area is a manageable drive and Sacramento is on the way to everything. Four of my top five sit within a couple hours of each other in Northern California; the fifth is out on Route 66 in Kingman, Arizona, because that's the halfway point of a drive I make.

So the map you'll see on this site is a map of where work sends me, not a ranking of the American burrito. Northern Nevada has its own places I'm still working through, and I'd rather write those up properly than rush them onto a list to look thorough.

the coverage map is shaped by the job. saying so is the point.

The rules I hold myself to

• I pay for the food. Every meal, every time. If something is ever comped or invited, a badge sits next to the verdict, not in a footnote.
• I don't invent anything. No made-up prices, quotes, visit dates, or dishes. If I haven't been, the page says I haven't been.
• The restaurant's words win. Names, spellings, accents, and how a kitchen describes its own food come from the kitchen.
• I don't rule on authenticity. Not my call to make and never has been.
• The jokes point at me. Travel, rental cars, my own bad planning. Never at anyone's language, neighborhood, or tradition.
• Directions before sharing. The restaurant's own link always sits above anything that promotes me.

The long version, including how scoring works and how to get something corrected, lives on the methodology page.