Montes Burritos Fuels You Up

Montes Burritos is yet another burrito and taco joint that lives inside a gas station, in this case, a Shell in farthest North Dallas. The original Monte's Burritos is a full-service restaurant in Whitney, which is about an hour and a half southwest of Dallas. This satellite site has been serving burritos for breakfast and lunch for a little more than three years.

More often than not, that local fuel station lives up to its name not only for your car but also for your stomach. Fill’er up, indeed, and Montes Burritos serves a fine selection of various breakfast and other homestyle burritos on their own from-scratch flour tortillas at an extremely reasonable price.

Menu choices start with their signature item, the Monte Burrito, which includes bacon, sausage, egg, cheese and potatoes for a mere $3.79. There is a “no egg” version as well, but this inexplicably goes for 20 cents more. The other highlight is the South of the Border, which has bacon, sausage, ham, egg, potatoes, tomatoes, onions, jalapeño and cheese and will set you back $4.79. This also comes egg-free, this time for a 30-cent upcharge. The economics may be confusing, but the flavor and size are not.

They also have various combos of eggs, bacon, chorizo or bean along with steak, beef tips and fajita options. We decided to sample four burritos: The Montes, the South of the Border, the beef fajita and the barbacoa. All were prepared promptly and served to go wrapped in aluminum foil, but there are a few small tables inside so we opted to eat there. All the burritos came swaddled in a fresh and hot flour tortilla.

The Montes and the South of the Border were similar, with the latter simply having more meat and some extra veggies. The green salsa was our favorite and went well with both of these burritos. Both burritos were good and either would have been enough for a quick breakfast or even a light lunch, but we had two others to try.
The beef fajita burrito had tender beef that was not overcooked and was complemented with grilled bell pepper and onion. The red salsa was particularly good on this, though in general the red was just average, especially compared with the outstanding green.
The barbacoa was stuffed full of savory beef seasoned correctly and seemed like it had been slow-cooked for hours. The cilantro and raw chopped onions were a welcome addition. We got out of there spending less than $20, which is amazing, and what’s more left us with enough money to buy almost a half-gallon of gas for our trip home.

Montes Burritos (inside the Shell station) 19004 Midway Road, Suite A (Dallas)  6 a.m. - 2 p.m. Monday - Saturday; closed Sunday