Back in my Boston days I enjoyed a steady diet of super chicken burritos and grilled vegetable quesadillas from the local chain, Anna’s Taqueria.  The burritos were hefty and filling, everything was fresh and made to order, and the prices were low — burritos for under $4.  For the poor and starving 20-something, that was hard to beat.

A peek at Anna’s website reveals that super burritos now go for $4.85.  Still a bargain.

The national chain Chipotle Mexican Grill seems a lot like Anna’s, just on a larger scale.  Lemme tell you, people I’d talked to were pumped that a Chipotle was coming to Westchester — and now it’s here.

I naively figured the Rye Brook grand opening would be a low key affair, but boy was I wrong. The place was mobbed.  Word must travel fast.

They keep the menu streamlined: burritos, tacos and salads. You can choose your meat (beef, chicken, carnitas, barbacoa) and select from an assortment of fillings and condiments, like beans, grilled peppers, guacamole and salsas.

A sign of the times — Chipotle’s menu board states that its meats are “naturally raised.” But they don’t give any more specifics, so I have no idea what that means.

The line was long, but it did move along fairly quickly.

I tried the chicken burrito filled with black beans, rice, lettuce, cheese and hot salsa.

Hey, not bad!  I’ll contend that the grilled chicken at Anna’s had better flavor, and there was something about the way they melted the cheese onto the tortilla while it was in the tortilla steamer that was more appealing than the sprinkled-on cheese at Chipotle. Anna’s burritos are also two bucks cheaper.

But I get the popularity of Chipotle.  It’s Mexican-American fast food that’s fairly healthy and far surpasses the reprehensible Taco Bell. (Which, if I remember correctly, pumps the sour cream out of a caulking gun?  Or did I imagine that?)

As chains go, Chipotle is a good one. But my heart will always belong to Anna’s.

Chipotle Mexican Grill
100 South Ridge St.
Rye Brook, NY
914-937-0351