I’ve always believed the best stories aren’t just written down, they’re cooked.
When the Amtrak train pulls into El Paso, the crew makes an announcement.
The burrito lady is on the platform.
Passengers step down onto the concrete to stretch their legs and blink into the desert light. Some are getting off for good. Most are just passing through. And waiting near the landing, timed precisely to the train’s arrival, is Alicia Fernández; known to travelers and locals alike as the Burrito Lady.1
She arrives with a rolling warmer cart, loaded with foil-wrapped burritos prepared earlier at her restaurant and kept hot for the brief window the train allows. There’s no signboard. No menu overhead. Just a quiet exchange: cash for a burrito, a nod of thanks, and then the conductor’s call of “all aboard”.2
The doors close. The train pulls away. And El Paso disappears again, except for the burrito now resting in your hands.
And it made me wonder: What does it mean when a city feeds you in passing?
I’m Jeanie Jo, and this is Food and the Story — where the best stories are cooked long before they’re told.
A Border City That Knows How to Feed Movement
El Paso has always lived in motion. Pressed up against Ciudad Juárez, it is a city shaped by crossings; of people, language, labor, and food. Here, borders are not just lines on a map but daily realities navigated through work schedules, family ties, and meals carried from one place to another.
The burrito reads, to me, as a food built for movement. Wrapped, portable, complete in one hand, it makes sense in places shaped by labor and travel. Rather than a dish meant to impress, it functions as a solution; warm, filling, and easy to carry. In a border city like El Paso, that kind of practicality doesn’t disappear. It settles in and becomes tradition.
Alice the Burrito Lady operates squarely within that tradition; not as a performance of heritage, but as its continuation.
From Backpack to Platform
According to local reporting, Alicia Fernández began selling burritos as a teenager while attending Canutillo High School. What started as a way to help her mother became a side job, and then slowly, a business.3 She first sold burritos out of a backpack. Over time, demand grew, and so did her operation.
Today, Fernández runs a brick-and-mortar restaurant in Canutillo, Texas. But the Amtrak platform remains part of her work. When the train arrives, she brings burritos prepared earlier that day, loaded into warmers, ready for travelers stepping briefly into El Paso.4
On the day we encountered her, the options were simple: bean and cheese, or green chile with potato and beef.⁶ Food designed not to impress, but to satisfy.
And that’s exactly the point.
Meeting the Story Twice
The first time I passed through El Paso last summer, I only heard about her. The story traveled down the train car in pieces; the way these things do. Someone knew someone who had bought a burrito. Someone else had missed the chance.
On our second trip, we planned for it. We stepped onto the platform knowing what we were looking for. We ordered. We ate. We carried El Paso back onto the train with us.
Later, when Chad and Lily drove through El Paso on their own, they made the stop too; this time at her brick-and-mortar store. Different burritos, same warmth, and the same understanding that this was something you don’t skip once you know it exists.
That’s how food becomes landmark.
Food That Meets You Where You Are
What strikes me most about Alice the Burrito Lady isn’t the novelty of the setting, but the restraint of the act. She doesn’t linger. She doesn’t sell a story. She doesn’t demand attention. She feeds people who are already moving.
This kind of food work has long been the domain of women; especially in border regions where cooking bridges formal and informal economies. Women cooked to sustain households, to supplement income, to respond to need long before those actions were labeled entrepreneurship.
Fernández’s work reflects that lineage. She bends her schedule to the train’s arrival. If it’s late, she waits. If it’s early, she adjusts. Her labor exists in relationship to others’ movement.
This is not nostalgia. It is infrastructure.
The Burrito as Practice
The burritos themselves are unassuming. Wrapped tightly. Warm through the foil. Balanced enough to eat without thinking too hard about it.
You might eat yours standing on the platform. Or back in your seat as the desert slides past the window. Either way, the moment is brief, but complete.
And then you’re gone.
There’s something deeply humane about that exchange. Food that does not ask you to stay. Food that feeds you and lets you go.
Reflection — Feeding the In-Between
We often imagine belonging as something fixed. A table. A house. A place you arrive and remain. But El Paso teaches a different lesson. Here, belonging can be momentary. It can be wrapped in foil. It can be handed to you between stops and carried forward.
This season has traced food as survival, pride, rivalry, and belonging.
Fajitas showed us survival; a woman at a grill feeding her family and a city.
The Chicago dog showed us pride; rules held tightly, identity dressed on a bun.
The cheesesteak showed us rivalry; loyalty declared at a street corner.
Gumbo showed us belonging; many histories simmered together in one pot.
Bagels showed us heritage; food carried across oceans, shaped by memory, and claimed by a city.
Pumpkin pie showed us gratitude; a table built from harvest, history, and the quiet work of remembering.
And here in El Paso, the burrito on the platform shows us care. Care that does not demand permanence. Care that understands movement. Care that feeds people exactly where they are.
Some food anchors you.
Some food declares who you are.
And some food simply meets you; warm, ready, and waiting … before the train moves on.
Every food has its story — and this one waits for you on the platform.
I’m Jeanie Jo, and this has been Food and the Story.
Passenger accounts describing the Amtrak crew announcing the burrito lady’s presence at the El Paso station.
Traveler reviews and firsthand narratives documenting the exchange on the platform.
KTSM 9 News, interview with Alicia Fernández (Alice the Burrito Lady), YouTube video:
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What an amazing (and beautiful) story! Can't wait to check out the rest of the series. :)
This was so beautiful to read!