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Should you ever motor west, you'll see that the burrito is the signature food of San Francisco. While the city is home to a number of trend-setting chefs and a wide variety of ethnic cuisine, the humble burrito is the common food that unites folks throughout the Bay Area.

With San Francisco's prolific taqueria scene and its bountiful burrito offerings, one man has made it his duty to impose some order on the carne-based chaos. Charles Hodgkins is that man. We first wrote about his site back in late 2005 and he had roughly 150 burritos reviewed on his site. Today, his review total stands at over 500 whopping slabs of tortilla-wrapped goodness.

We recommend reading his extensive FAQ for an explanation of his innovative moustache-based rating scale and the key elements behind his detailed ratings. However, we were curious about how he was bitten by the burrito bug and the site's origin story, so we posed a few questions to the salsa-slathered mind behind Burritoeater...

Hey Charles, when did you start Burritoeater? What was the impetus?

I began working on the project on New Year's Day, 2003, but the site itself didn't see the light of day until June 24, 2005. I wasn't all that into the idea of creating a website around my taqueria data until I was laid off from my job at CNET in October 2004. I was sitting around with two of my colleagues that had also been laid off, and we were discussing what our next steps would be. John's an author and was going to publish his next book; Tim's a musician and was going to finish his next record. I shrugged and said, I'll do the taqueria website. Fast forward three years later: International notoriety is now mine. Read the full profile...