Shannon Hall was 6 when his parents, Marlene Hall and Gabriel Ramirez, opened their restaurant in 1994, which they named for their son: Gorditos Healthy Mexican. (“Gordito” basically means “chubby little one” in Spanish.) The family-owned restaurant has always had big portions, perhaps none more impressive than the burrito grande.
Weighing in at 4 pounds and requiring two full-size tortillas to contain the ingredients, the burrito grande at Gorditos has long been compared in size to a newborn baby. Hall — who has been running the restaurant since his parents retired to Hawaii in 2009 — says it was around 1998 that the first customer took a photo of their baby next to a burrito grande.
A few years later, photos of newborns next to burritos started to proliferate in the restaurant. Hall leaned into it: He had a friend draw a logo of a joyful baby riding a burrito like a horse.
It’s a long-standing tradition that has connected Seattle families inside the restaurant and out. Last month, nearly 30 years after his parents opened the shop, Hall had his own baby. Four days after he was born, Hall and his wife brought in their newborn to take a photo next to a burrito grande.
“It’s my restaurant,” he said with a laugh. “I have to do it.”
There’s not much that has changed at Gorditos over the past 30 years, Hall said. It’s always had a robust group of regulars, people that stuck by the small business through multiple disasters, like the gas explosion that leveled nearby businesses in 2016 and the coronavirus pandemic.
“During COVID, we gained a decent amount of regulars as well through takeout and now we see them in-store,” Hall said. “I have people I have never met but I make them an order two or three times a week.”
What has changed is the way the burrito grande is served, another pandemic pivot. Hall has stuck with the compostable takeout containers he started using during the pandemic when dining rooms were closed. A wet burrito grande was too large to be put whole into a container, so he started cutting it in half. However, Hall promises that if people want to take a baby photo with a burrito, he’s happy to put it on a plate.
Another thing that stuck around after pandemic restrictions relaxed were the picnic tables Hall had put in the dining room, making the place feel even more relaxed and friendly.
“I believe burritos should be eaten in parks with your friends,” Hall said, “so the idea is to be more like a community park. It’s fun.”
A burrito baby turns 21
The Hofmeisters are one of the many families with a heartfelt Gorditos story.
Matt and Rachel Hofmeister started dating in 1999. They met at the Woodland Park Zoo; Matt was working security while Rachel was in the education department. They often went out for lunch around Greenwood and Phinney Ridge, and Gorditos was always a favorite.
“It was probably our third date, and I don’t know if Matt was trying to impress me by eating the entire burrito grande, but it’s a thing of pride,” Rachel Hofmeister said. They fell in love over burritos and made a point to stop in whenever they were in the area, long after they left their jobs at the zoo.
In 2003, the couple was married and living in Mountain Home, Idaho, but were in the Seattle area when their son Tim was born — five weeks premature, but healthy.
Six days later, the family was discharged from the hospital. One of the first stops they made was Gorditos, placing newborn Tim next to a burrito grande.
“Rachel took the picture and we thought it was pretty funny,” Matt said.
Months later, friends from Seattle came to visit the Hofmeisters, who printed off a copy of the photo to be brought back to Gorditos in Greenwood. Hall says the Hofmeisters weren’t the first to snap a pic of a baby next to a grande, but Tim was the first to end up on the wall, launching a tradition that had framed snapshots covering the walls up until the gas explosion.
The photo wall wasn’t re-created after the gas explosion, but Hall now runs an Instagram page called Baby Burrito Hall of Fame, where people can send him baby pictures to be posted.
Former burrito baby Tim has since traveled the world over, but was drawn back to Seattle this month to celebrate a milestone at the family’s beloved Mexican joint.
Matt Hofmeister was a career military man — his stint at the zoo was a blip in between active duty — and that career brought the family all over the U.S. Tim spent his 9th birthday hiking the Appalachian Trail while they were living in Georgia, where his brother Ben was born, and they spent years in Germany before relocating to Olympia for good two years ago.
As Tim grew up, the family stopped in at Gorditos for a burrito every time they were in the area, taking snapshots of their growing boy next to a burrito grande each time. Tim now lives in Japan, but before he left last fall, his dad took him to Gorditos for his first burrito grande. “He ate the whole thing,” Matt Hofmeister said with pride.
On April 12, with Tim in town, the family gathered together once again to celebrate Tim’s 21st birthday — with burritos at Gorditos, of course.
“The fact that I’m a burrito baby doesn’t mean a whole lot,” Tim said, “but I do like burritos.”