Bueno Y Sano
1 Boltwood Walk, Amherst
253-4000 or 549-0077 for Delivery Express
134 Main St., Northampton
586-7311
Hours: 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.
Prices: To $8.50.
Bueno Y Sano, which means “good and healthy,” should be called “bueno and muy rápidamente.” Responding to orders delivered online, on the phone and in person from a clientele of over 20,000 undergrads requires an outfit built for speed. With a staff of six, Bueno Y Sano manages to pull it off every day from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. Who cares if the tables are a little messy? Food is fuel!
At around 6:55 p.m. on a Wednesday night, a very tall dude ducks in with two friends. He is maybe six feet five inches tall and lopes to the counter in two strides while speaking on a cell phone and glancing at the menu over the head of the pretty cashier, who is 22 years old, tops.
“Hold on,” he says to the person on the other end of the phone. He orders and the cashier whips around to the line behind her and yells, “Dos burritos filete y el chile de la carne de vaca hacen que en segundo lugar uno con el yogur gordo bajo,” and hands him a piece of paper for his order. He pays and says into the phone, “Yeah, I’m paying right now…”
Burritos are king at Bueno Y Sano. The menu also consists of soft tacos, quesadillas and salad and, of course, chips and salsa. A 25 cent cup of salsa is dispensed in both hot and mild versions. It comes with chips (75 cents). The salsa is described as made fresh with no preservatives, but it is not the chunky kind. “If the chips are stale, come back, I’ll give you better,” cries the cashier to everyone who comes in. No one returns the chips.
The burrito has rice, beans, lettuce, cheese and pico de gallo sauce (tomato, cilantro and onion). The more diminutive soft taco is also a flour tortilla with cheese, lettuce, the pico, mild sauce and sour cream or low-fat yogurt. Additions for both include chicken, beans, steak, spinach, chickpea and red curry and seitan, a vegetarian beef substitute. With the burrito you can also get grilled shrimp and sautéed mushrooms.
My favorite is the quesadilla, which is a crisped flour tortilla wrapped around melted cheese, the pico and sour cream with black beans or rice. The list of additions is vast and some of them are fresh. They include roasted garlic, barbecued chicken, fresh spinach and seitan, among others. There is also a salad with roasted red pepper to which can be added grilled zucchini, portabella and seitan.
We choose a table near a mural depicting a Mexican village. Nearby are athletes snarfing carbs, couples hooking up, students intent on laptops and people reading. Three women sitting at a high top near me drink large sodas and multiple orders of chips. One yells, “Hey, no photos, I’ve got a warrant out.”
My friends are UMass students and one has been to the restaurant before. Suna orders her favorite dish, a burrito with barbecued chicken. “Nice barbecue, ” she says. “I get it every time I come here because it’s so huge!” Jen orders the soft taco with steak, which was exactly like the burrito but without the rice and beans. It is the size of a softball.
Because they are in their junior year and recently finished up clinical work at Baystate in the maternity ward, my friends’ discussion was focused on how they run around all day from 6 in the a.m. to 3 p.m. and only in between a patient’s contractions do they get a chance to sit down. Both agreed that eating at Bueno Y Sano is probably healthier than their usual diet of pasta, potatoes and pizza.
