The Wet Burrito: A Michigan Original

Here’s a fun one to surprise people with: one of America’s beloved Tex-Mex dishes — the wet burrito — was very likely born in a Grand Rapids kitchen. If you grew up in West Michigan, the wet burrito is the burrito: a big flour tortilla stuffed with seasoned beef and beans, then drowned in red enchilada-style sauce, blanketed with melted cheese, and eaten with a fork.

The Beltline Bar in Grand Rapids — open since 1953 and Tex-Mex since around 1958 — is almost universally credited with introducing the wet burrito in 1966. How it landed on the menu is the disputed (and charming) part. One story says an oversized shipment of tortillas arrived while the owner was on vacation, so the manager sauced them all up as a special, and there was a line out the door when the boss got back. Another credits a cook who doused a burrito in sauce to satisfy a trucker who complained his was too dry. Skeptics rightly note that smothered burritos already existed in the Southwest — so Grand Rapids may have given the dish its “wet” name and its Midwest form rather than inventing the whole idea.

Either way, West Michigan has had a vibrant Mexican American community since the 1920s, and the Beltline has now served something like six million of them.