My favorite gigantic chain/hole in the wall

Roberto's is an oxymoron.  As you can see, it is a hole in the wall restaurant.  It looks like a mom and pop, legitimately authentic, taco-truck style eatery.  What could be more local, more homemade, more small?  Well, a lot of things.  If you look on google maps for Roberto's in Las Vegas alone (I think they actually started in San Diego), like this you can see there are actually a million of them.  For a city the size of Vegas, Roberto's has a Starbucks-like ubiquity.  

For you who are reading this from Vegas, did you ever think of Roberto's as a "big business" type of corporation?  Probably not.  Roberto's is hiding in plain sight.  A gigantic corporation, masquerading as a ton of tiny eateries.  Brilliant.

So, let's talk about what makes Roberto's able to grow?  Two things - authenticity and quality.  This is a Mexican restaurant where I frequently see Mexicans eat.  You know it's true because the people working there barely speak English.  Yet, I, a non-Mexican, and my non-Mexican wife, kids and friends love to eat there.  It's cheap but delicious.  Let me pick on my favorites:

1. Breakfast Burritos - They make the best breakfast burritos.  Eggs, hasbrowns, bacon and cheese.  They also come with pico de gallo, but I skip it because I am not an onion fan.  They are perfection.  The one I go to, in particular, is extra good.  This highlights another interesting facet of Roberto's - it is not 100% uniform.  This isn't Taco Bell, or Del Taco.  Your breakfast burrito may vary slightly, from location to location.  

2. Carne Asada Fries - Nachos.  They're great.  Chips, with cheese, salsa, maybe avocados, onions, hot sauce.  You know the drill.  Now, substitute fries for the nachos.  Welcome to carne asada fries.  Take french fries, cover them in chopped steak - carne asada - and put on shredded cheese (not the creamy nacho cheese), pico de gallo and guacamole (I skip the quacamole).  Delicious in a quantity that will feed at least two people.

My last favorite thing - the salsa/lemon/lime/pickled vegetable/cucumber/jalepeno bar.  Each Roberto's has a salsa bar with the above items.  So, you order off the menu and add what you want to it.  I especially like that they have lemons or limes - my Diet Pepsi loves it.  This is especially great, because it is the genesis of one of my favorite quotes (it is a quote because my buddies from the office have adopted it and frequently use it against me).  My buddy and I were having breakfast burritos, I got the red (spicy) salsa and he just grabbed about four or five full size pickled jalapenos.  He then (every time) dissassembles his burrito, chops up the jalpenos and puts them all in there.  I looked at what he was doing, considered what he would be doing in the near future and said:

"You must hate your own [butt]hole."

Now everytime one of us is ordering something spicy, this bon mot is employed.  We sure are classy.