4/20 munchies? Gobbleritos on the menu at Mad Mex

You’ve heard of Christmas in July.

How about Thanksgiving in April?

Mad Mex, the regional restaurant with 12 locations in the Pittsburgh region, will be selling its signature Gobbleritos on Tuesday.

The Gobblerito is among the biggest burritos crafted at Mad Mex, the flagship of Big Burrito Restaurant Group, and it’s billed as a Thanksgiving dinner stuffed into a burrito.

The recipe includes house-roasted turkey, creamy black bean mashed potatoes, bread stuffing and buttery corn wrapped in a flour tortilla and covered with gravy. A cup of cranberry sauce completes the dish, which is an autumnal tradition in these parts.

It started “years and years ago” when one of Big Burrito’s cooks was grabbing food at a diner after a night on the town and ordered a hot turkey sandwich.

The cook, Matt Glick, enjoyed the meal and wondered how it would taste if it was made as a burrito. The rest is part of the culinary history of the region.

Big Burrito Corporate Chef Bill Fuller said the restaurant started selling them on 4/20, an informal holiday among pot smokers, as a nod to the increased appetite that can accompany marijuana use.

“We thought it was pretty funny,” Fuller said.

They moved it to the Tuesday closest to 4/20 because keeping up with the demand for Gobbleritos along with a dinner rush was tough on weekends. This year, Gobblerito Day falls on 4/20.

In 2019, Mad Mex sold 6,800 Gobbleritos across its 12 locations on Gobblerito Day, Fuller said. He said the goal Tuesday will be to sell 6,975.

Amid the stress of the coronavirus pandemic last year, Gobbleritos were on the menu from mid-March to mid-May to provide comfort food to takeout customers, Fuller said.

“Everybody was so scared and unhappy” during that time and it was something Mad Mex could do to both boost business and make people happy, he said.

People should preorder their Gobbleritos before 6 p.m. Tuesday to ensure they receive their order, Fuller said.

“We want to have enough for the whole day. We don’t want to run out,” he said.

For information about how to order, click here.