Dining in Davis: Taqueria El Burrito

New hot spot for late-night dining, options way beyond namesake dish

Written by Katie Morris
Aggie Food Writer
Published on March 6, 2013
Filed under Aggie Eats, Blogs

You’re strolling downtown after midnight on a Friday after hitting the bars — what sounds like the most satisfying morsel you can grab to fix your case of the munchies? Owner Jose Cortez of Taqueria El Burrito, which opened in November in the old Great Wall of China II location across from de Vere’s, was very bright in deciding to open a downtown spot that serves tasty, inexpensive Mexican food and is — punchline — open until 3 a.m. on weekend nights. El Burrito is more than just late-night craving satisfaction, though. Walking through the door, I noticed nothing short of the typical taqueria décor — Spanish-style tile floors, Corona and Bud Light neon signs in the windows, traditional brightly-colored woven fabric laid into the table tops, a refrigerator of Mexican popsicles by the door and Tapatío and habanero hot sauce bottles on every table. Aurally speaking, the Mariachi music playing in the background completes the taqueria experience. Another notable quality of El Burrito is its cleanliness — the continuously... ...

ASUCD senators reflect on campaign platforms

Six ASUCD senators said their farewells during last Thursday’s Senate meeting as six new senators took their place. We asked former senators Beatriz Anguiano, Bradley Bottoms, Don Gilbert, Joyce Han, Kabir Kapur and Paul Min to provide statements reflecting on their terms. Senators who did respond admitted to accomplishing few, if any, of their platforms. However, they still feel that they were successful leaders overall. Beatriz Anguiano Platforms Create more student financial aid advisors to help students Create a resource guide on appealing dismissal decisions Establish a textbook reserve in the Student Community Center Grant funds to community-specific graduations Accomplished? Anguiano could not be reached to receive feedback on her term in office. More grants for community-specific graduations were secured, though. Bradley Bottoms Platforms Fight tuition hikes Create a safer environment for bicyclists. Accomplished? “For my advocacy platform I said that I would engage leaders by bringing UC Davis students to the Capitol as well as bring leaders back to campus for direct conversations with students and to see the... ...

Free legal consultation available through ASUCD

Attorney Ava Landers browses through the list of students seeking legal advice. Next up: a student wanting legal consultation, because their roommate ate their cookie. ASUCD contracts with an attorney to offer registered undergraduate students free legal phone consultation, a service that seems unknown to many students. Every quarter, each student can get up to 15 minutes of free consultation. In some cases, students may schedule another 15 minutes in the same quarter if needed. Paid for out of ASUCD student fees, the service has been around as far back as the 1980s. Students can go to the ASUCD office at 347 Memorial Union, show their student ID card and make an appointment for their free consultation. The issues students want advice for vary, with about 85 percent pertaining to tenant-landlord issues, according to Landers. “A lot of the time, it’s roommate issues and housing issues,” said Kathy Wilton, ASUCD Student Services Office Manager. “Those are the most prominent things. Every once in a while, you have someone who got... ...

Google Drive auditing feature removed for UC Davis emails

Two weeks ago, some students began receiving a new notification when trying to access online documents on Google Drive through their UC Davis email accounts due to a new Google feature. The new feature, introduced by Google, allowed administrators to see when a document was viewed or edited. A notification was displayed to students trying to access a document through their UC Davis email accounts. It has since been turned off for UC Davis account holders. “You are about to access a document administered by the UC Davis domain. Your activity on that document will be logged and viewable to the UC Davis administrator,” the notification stated. Gabriel Youtsey, Interim Assistant CIO of the Office of the Vice Provost in the Information and Educational Technology (IET) department, said that the department investigated the feature. “There was no intention of recording anyone’s activity on Google Docs,” Youtsey said. The feature only allowed administrators to see when someone viewed or edited a document. The actual content of the documents or files was... ...

Aggie Digest

The UC Davis women’s water polo did some early spring cleaning as they swept their opponents in the 33rd annual Aggie Shootout. The 14th-ranked Aggies beat Concordia, Santa Clara and Colorado State as they improved their record to 10-7 on the season. The weekend heroes were seniors Carmen Eggert and Jessica Dunn, who scored a combined 17 goals in the tripleheader. The duo also had a hand in most of the other Aggie goals, as Eggert had two assists and Dunn had seven assists total. In the first game on Saturday, Concordia struck first, scoring with an early goal to surge ahead by one. However, from there the Aggies took control. Eggert scored five of her nine goals against the Eagles. Her high-scoring performance paved the way for an easy UC Davis victory by the score of 14-9. Dunn’s four goals in the Aggies’ second game against Santa Clara proved to be vital in the closest match of the day. She started off firing as she added two goals in... ...

Tech Tips: Cheap books? How about free?

With the ever-rising costs of textbooks, many students are looking for cheaper, or even free, alternatives to help alleviate the financial burden. Amazon and other used book sources can provide many of the required books at a much cheaper rate than the campus bookstore, but some web-savvy students have started scouring the web for free (and legal) versions of their required texts. Without a doubt, Project Gutenberg (PG) is the biggest and best online collection of free eBooks, containing material on thousands of topics. What is it? Project Gutenberg was founded in 1971 by Michael S. Hart, the inventor of the eBook. It gets its name from the famed Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of the printing press. Project Gutenberg is the oldest online library of eBooks, containing over 42,000 titles. PG prides itself on having the best free versions of eBooks available. Project Gutenberg also offers a platform for authors to electronically publish their book. How much does it cost? Access to Project Gutenberg is free. However, you can donate... ...

Pre-health organizations gear-up undergraduates for future

Students who wish to be in the pre-health field at UC Davis may have different majors, but many strive for one goal: to pursue their fields of study after graduating and ultimately help others. Both the Nursing Club and the Foresight Pre-Optometry Club help students interested in pursuing nursing or optometry careers beyond their UC Davis education. The Foresight Pre-Optometry Club aims to provide both academic and social support to students who are willing to learn more about the profession of optometry. Members are mainly given all the information needed about the process of applying to optometry school. “I decided to join fall of my sophomore year after having spent my first year at Davis as an undeclared major and exploring various career options,” said Teresa Nguyen, a fourth-year psychology major. “Optometry was the path that made the most sense to me. It’s clean, comfortable and fits my personality.” For member Ece Turhal, a fourth-year biochemistry major, the most important part is the screening process for children in the community.... ...

Column: Things that eat

*Editor’s note: I realize that I have drastically oversimplified many of these concepts, but there is just too much information to adequately express it all. You could easily fill 500 single-spaced pages explaining just the first paragraph. For you organic chemistry people, the size of this column is limited by steric hinderance. For the non-o-chem people, the number of things is too damn high. In the beginning, billions of years ago, there was a soup of free floating nucleotides that, through molecular interaction, grouped together into the first self-replicating entity. Translation: once upon a time, there were a bunch of “almost-things” that grouped together into the first thing. This is generally considered to be a good thing. The groups of nucleotides needed to replicate themselves, and to do so, needed to assimilate more free-floating nucleotides as raw material for growth. Translation: to make more of themselves, the things ate more almost-things. The problem is that the things were unstable; they would break all the time. This is generally considered to... ...

News in Brief: California students march at state capitol

As part of the March to Advocate and Reclaim California’s Higher Education (M.A.R.C.H.E) event, University of California, California State University and California Community Colleges students assembled for a rally at 10 a.m. on Monday at the Capitol building in Sacramento. The rally was a push for adequate funding of higher education, according to a March 1 University of California Student Association (UCSA) news release. The rally also aimed to demand that the state legislature reduce tuition by fully funding higher education and preserving the Cal Grant program, the release stated. ASUCD Senator Felicia Ong said that she believes that students do not realize the true impact they can have on elected officials. “Being in such close proximity to Sacramento, [UC Davis] students are at an advantage when it comes to advocating for higher education and voicing their concerns to our state legislators. I think the [M.A.R.C.H.E.] was a prime opportunity for students to participate in advocacy at the state level, not only because Sacramento is just a 20-minute drive away,... ...

Smarter robots and you

Robots. They’re everywhere around us. We work with them in factories and use them in conditions unsuitable for humans. As ubiquitous as they are, relatively few people actually understand the underpinnings and complexities of these man-made creations. Programming a robot to perform multivariable tasks is a difficult job, and overcoming these issues takes quite a bit of time and effort. “Any typos ruin your entire program. Any misplaced brackets, any code that takes up too much processing power, becomes a liability. Your code has to be documented for others to use; it has to use variables that others can understand,” said Max Le Merle, a computer science major with an emphasis in robotics from Trinity College. These are just some of the issues a programmer often faces when developing software required to instruct robots. “The most common way [to control a robot] is to write a computer program, and the program can transfer to [the] robotic systems, where [it] can perform autonomously,” said Harry Cheng, a professor in the Mechanical... ...

Ratepayers sue City of Davis over water rates

A class action lawsuit was filed against the City of Davis on Jan. 30, alleging that the city does not charge itself for water used at city-owned facilities. As a result, ratepayers are paying for their water usage along with the city’s. The lawsuit also states that the city’s current and proposed water rates for ratepayers are illegal. The plaintiffs are the Yolo Ratepayers for Affordable Public Utility Services and John Munn, the former president of the Yolo County Taxpayers Association. They are represented by Michael Harrington, an aviation and maritime attorney who is a former Davis City Council of member. “The lawsuit alleges that the current and two proposed water rates violate the proportionality requirement of Proposition 218,” Harrington said. According to Harrington, the suit has not been served, but will be soon. The date is still undetermined. Prop. 218, which was passed in 1996, states that a ratepayer cannot be charged more than the cost of supplying water to their property. The plaintiffs are asking the court to... ...

Column: How to stop time

Some shake If you have ever been curious about the mind-bending effects of hallucinogens, but have been scared by the fact that most are illegal, then you’re in luck. There are many over-the-counter hallucinogens that are natural and safe and that won’t make you fail your drug test. The most intense and exciting of these is definitely a little sage plant known as Salvia. Native to the Sierra Mazateca in Mexico, this plant is famous for its immediate psychoactive effect. It looks like sage, and it is usually sold already ground up and ready to smoke. If you’ve never smoked anything in your life, I would recommend you use a bubbler. It’ll be easier on your throat. I would also recommend trying it in a safe, comfortable place where you wouldn’t mind embarrassing yourself a little. It will make you hallucinate, so you shouldn’t try it on the roof or while driving or near any fiery or sharp objects that you might mistake as talking pieces of candy. While everyone... ...