La Cascada Taqueria

Sucks. They have a sign out front that says proudly, "Voted Best Burrito in Berkeley." At the bottom it reads, "The Daily Californian, 1997."

Quality of meat (1-10) : 3.2
So bad. It's dry and almost completely flavorless. The flavor it does have is passed on from the cigarettes these particular meatpackers smoke while working. This is on par with Vallarta, maybe even a bit worse. This brings up an interesting problem, though. Because the meat at La Burrita wasn't reeeally that much better, so I have decided to, in bold letters, decrease La Burrita's quality of meat score to 4.1. It's not that big a deal, since I think the 4.9 communicated the bottom line: the meat at La Burrita is pretty bad.

Quality of house salsa (1-10) : 7.3
The salsa at places with awful burritos often receives high scores, as you may have noticed. Today I realized that the reason for this might be that the saving grace of a shitty burrito is the salsa you put on it. My first thought after biting into this particular burrito was, "Wow, I need to get some salsa on here, NOW." It is difficult to compare salsas 100% cerebrally, but I think this phenomenon maybe slightly inflates salsa scores of shitty burrito joints. In my mind, the chances the salsa is actually legit are at least as strong as the chance of an inflation factor. Anyway, the salsa was decent. It looked nice, too. But please. Don't come here just for the salsa. Save your money, for God's sake.

Quality of guacamole (1-10) : 4.4
Did not taste too pleasant. The flavor was okay but was also very obviously not fresh. Not sure if it's worth the 85 cents extra, but you should steer clear of this burrito anyway.

Quality of chips (1-5) : 3.3
The chips were nothing too exciting. They were standard tortilla chips, like the standard tortilla chips they sell at Trader Joe's in the yellow & blue bag.

Size/diversity of menu (1-5) : 2.8
This is not a great score for diversity of menu. The only credit comes from having a variety of wraps and vegetarian burritos, which are kind of the same thing here. Some sound interesting, however, I would bet they suck as well.

Size of burrito (1-5) : 3.4
The burrito was pretty big, I guess, teetering on the precipice of unmanageable for the non-conditioned burrito consumer.

Approximate price (for a standard burrito) : ~$7

Locally owned? : Probably

Satisfaction factor (1-10) : 2.9

Overall taste (1-10) : 3.1
I would rather eat any burrito I have ever tried (except El Sombrero on University and Shattuck) than this one. You should be tipped off by the deceving sign out front that the proprietors of La Cascada, as well as the burrito, are not to be trusted. I swear I would choose Vallarta over this place any day of the week, and that's saying something. Now that I think about it, the same might be true for La Burrita...no, probably just some of the days of the week. I hereby, again in bold letters, reduce La Burrita's overall taste score to 4.1. Because it really does suck.

La Cascada Taqueria
2164 Center St.
Berkeley, CA 94704