Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

The law just requires that you post calorie information... I think Chipotle decided to do the "Calorie Range" as a way to post mis-leading information. Because items are not pre-made with a specific set of ingredients, and calories will vary based on your personal selections, they are well within their legal right to post a "range"- but clearly the range is total baloney.

As for the law itself, while I agree that eating by numbers is no way to live, there are clearly alot of people who think that fast food is less fattening than it is, and while we are all fairly well informed eaters- you'd be really surprised how many people are shocked to discover how incredibly fattening a Chipotle Burrito is.

As far as Chipotle being for "Serious Eaters", while their use of organic and/or fresh ingredients is commendable, it's still the lesser of two evils- and is clearly fast food made to be mass marketed and mass produced across the country in a cookie cutter way.

Try an asada steak, guac, and pico do gallo burrito (holding the rice, beans, peppers, onions, cheese, sour cream, lettuce, and anything else I might have missed). Have it with a Negra Modelo. Grab a couple lemon wedges from the fixins bar, and sprinkle some lemon juice as you go.

I think the rice is this biggest sneak when it comes to calories.
My favorite is a barbacoa salad.

Go to this website www.chipotlefan.com/index.php?id=nutrition_calculator to find out just how bad for you it is. Never stops me from going, even though I live in a Tex-Mex capital. I love their guac.

I generally have a burrito bol with barbacoa, rice, black beans, fajita veggies, tomato salsa, green salsa & lettuce. It's 600 calories, which is a bit much, but not the end of the world if you're eating healthy the rest of the time. I can always drop the beans or the veggies if I want to come in lower, or switch to chicken. Sometimes I just go vegetarian, which saves me calories as well.

The real calorie saver is dropping that tortilla.

I also support having calorie info available. I don't think the fuzzy math on the Chipotle menu is helpful, but I do believe that restaurants should make their calorie info available online or in a separate sheet that could be reviewed at the restaurant. It really burns me when places refuse to do so... ahem, Quiznos (whose claims to be healthy I find dubious).

Chipotle IS for serious eaters. Their fresh ingredients and free-range meats are a welcome taste to the tired ingredients of other fast food places. The Chipotle calculator mentioned above is a really helpful guide to figuring out the calories. Maintain portions, hold cheese & sour cream for me! But keep that "healthy fat" guacamole!