I don't know about you, but I feel like my Chipotle menu has been looking a little grim since the departure of the chorizo. With its burst of flavors and inclusion of just about every ingredient I love, I've had a chorizo-size hole in my heart since around this time last year. The good news is that the well-loved menu item is making its way from our dreams and back onto menus, but only for a limited time.
Chipotle announced that they would be bringing it back on September 10 in a press release. The item will be available in locations nationwide, but will only be here for a limited time. The company didn't specify when exactly the chorizo would be leaving us again, but that's all the more reason to head down to our local spots before the lines start.
Chris Brandt, the chief marketing officer at Chipotle said, "Chorizo had a big following in its heyday, and a lot of our customers were disappointed when it was taken off the menu. As part of our overall commitment to menu innovation and delivering the craveable food our customers love, we're spicing things up and bringing chorizo back to our menu."
Though this might be good news for some, it's no surprise to a lot of others due to Chipotle's recent bad press. The food chain has been linked to a series of food poisoning cases just this past month, which prompted the company's CEO, Brian Niccol, to release a statement assuring customers the staff would be retrained. "Chipotle has a zero-tolerance policy for any violations of our stringent food safety standards and we are committed to doing all we can to ensure it does not happen again," Niccol told USA Today. "Once we identified this incident, we acted quickly to close the Powell restaurant and implemented our food safety response protocols that include total replacement of all food inventory and complete cleaning and sanitization of the restaurant."
The Center for Disease Control also got involved and NPR reported that the CDC blamed the food poisoning on clostridium perfringens, which happens to certain meats like beef and chicken when they've been prepared in large quantities and kept warm for a significant amount of time before serving.
For plenty of the chain's fans, though, this isn't particularly news or enough of a deterrent to prevent returning. Locations will no doubt be flooded with people hunting for the chorizo, so if you've been itching for one you should head down to your local Chipotle before they're all gone.