There was a time when you could walk into a Baja Tortilla Grill and order a bean and cheese burrito. It was simple – a tortilla, beans, cheese. But no longer. Last week I tried to order a bean and cheese burrito at Baja and was told no.

“We don’t do bean and cheese burritos anymore,” the counter person told me. “We have a whole new menu.”

Now, if you would like a vegetarian burrito at Baja, you must order the “veggie burrito especial.” What makes it so “especial” is that it marries Mexican rice and beans with a big load of disgusting, limp vegetables. The vegetables consist of onions, bell peppers, zucchini and summer squash.

While I can give them the onions and peppers, I hold them in contempt for the zucchini and summer squash. Summer squash is the vegetable most often offered up to vegetarians by restaurants confused about what to serve this perplexing group of people. Admittedly, summer squash is the vegetable only someone who has sworn off meat could love; unfortunately, even lots of us, including me, find it disgusting.

Vegetarians do not necessarily embrace all produce. We don’t want to eat mounds of overcooked, flaccid vegetables that look as if they were at the bottom of the packing crate. To be sure, Baja Tortilla Grill is still ahead of the game when stacked against such sinners as Cousin’s Subs, which offers a veggie sub that is an iceberg lettuce salad dumped onto bread, or Quiznos, who goes Cousin’s one better and takes that iceberg lettuce salad on bread and heats it up so that it’s a hot iceberg lettuce salad on bread.

I ended up picking out all the zucchini and summer squash from my especial burrito and while I did I thought about how I’d have to remember to order the veggie burrito without the veggies next time around. But then it occurred to me that there didn’t need to be a next time. After all, if I want poor man’s Chipotle I can just go to… Chipotle.