Original Anna's Taqueria closes

I feel this one more than I have most of the other closures, I think. I've been going to Anna's for at least 21 years.
Still, if things are tight for them that they'd consider closing any location, closing this location may be the way to go, It's walking distance to their Harvard St location, so they still have most of that market covered. Their other locations are spread out. The Beacon St location is smaller than Harvard St (even after they more than doubled seating at Beacon by getting the adjoining shopfront). The other consideration would be what the situation was there for mortgage or rent.
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I will add that if they want to boost their business, they would do well to go back to their old salsa recipe. 15, 20 years ago, it was very nice - for quite a while now just ordinary.
Also back to their old quesadillas. Yeah, I like their hearty-sized quesedilla these days, but they're a little too round and rolled - they fall open when you're trying to eat them. Would gladly give up a little filling for them to fold them to an overlapped seal like they used to.

I lived at the corner of Summit and Beacon when they opened, and have been a huge fan ever since. I really hope they reopen their Prudential location.

I might have had my first burrito there in 2000. A friend recommended the place with the line, "You can get a burrito and coke for under $5!" I would subsequently go several times a week for years.

Later I switched to Boca Grande but that particular Anna's still held a special place in my heart.

for many.

I never understood the draw of Ana's. Its just not very good, and never was very good. Meh comes to mind.

Its the Olive Garden of "mexican"

"Then again, most people who contract the virus don't die from it. Whether they suffer long-term problems is another question." adamg on UHub, Aug 25, 2020

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Another Baker casualty. In case readers missed it, most people who contract the virus don't die from it. That's quite an understatement. In fact, 99.96% of Americans will NOT die from Covid. Will anyone ask Baker the reason why he has chosen to decimate the restaurant industry in MA for an illness with an average age of death now hovering around 84? This is beyond ridiculous at this point and it will only get worse.

I'm told that Baker's ABCC is demanding that all outstanding beer/liquor bills from last spring be paid by September 1 after all extensions have been exhausted. Most locally owned, small restaurants don't have that kind of money. Restaurants are forbidden from buying booze at the liquor store and must go through ABCC regulated distributors. Watch for even more "mom and pops" to be targeted if they continue to serve beer/wine/liquor after Tuesday. With most states mostly open, what is Baker's endgame amid the nation's HIGHEST unemployment rate?

I probably ate burritos from there, or another Anna's, at least once a week between about 1996 and 2017. Loved every bite for most of that time. Waited for years for the Cambridge Street location to finally open and dreamed of having one in Back Bay. But by the time the Pru location opened, we were less enthused. We tried the burritos twice and thought they were awful.

In the previous century, you got a big, thick slice of cheese on your burrito, and ordering extra cheese got you a second one for about 75 cents. Then they began tearing the cheese slice in half, while you watched, so you had to order "extra" to get a full slice of cheese for the same price. That half slice grew thinner and thinner over the years.

We could always tell when the owner had made a site visit: for a few days, your beans and rice were carefully measured and your burrito was much smaller. In about a week, they'd revert to the usual quantity. Prices went up and up, of course. A few years ago, the burritos became consistently tasteless (cooking the beans without salt?) at most locations (Newton Highlands wasn't so bad.) We switched to Felipe and haven't looked back. But it's still sad to see the original Anna's go.

It was always amazing that Anna's maintained two locations 1/4 mile apart. It's not a Dunk's (which you'd expect).

Some tidbits:

In the early days of Facebook, there was a group called "I get Pino's on the way home from Anna's" mostly for Newton kids. In high school (North) there were definitely times when someone with a car and a free block at lunch would make an Anna's run and bring back half a dozen burritos. Everyone in the next class who didn't have a burrito was jealous. Back then it was cash-only, and at one point I kept a log of how much a burrito cost, because despite ordering the same thing (super Carnitas) it always wound up costing something different. But for $3 for a burrito, I didn't complain.

Anna's, of course, is part of the sibling rivalry with Boca Grande (background here). Both are/were owned by a pair of Japanese-Americans from the West Coast who wanted a Mission-style burrito in Boston and couldn't find one. So basically Mexican food was brought to San Francisco and California-ized, then brought to Boston by Asian-Americans (some more genesis here). If that's not the American dream, I don't know what is. Sadly, Michael passed away last year. (Oh, and Anna's is fine; it was great in the '90s when it and Boca Grande were the only games in town. California is still better. But Chipotle is trash, don't @ me, they don't even melt their cheese and the fresh-chopped carnitas at Anna's are where it is at.)

Apparently, when MIT was looking for a new food vendor in 2004, they did a survey, and the majority of responses wanted Anna's. So in Anna's came, and it's as busy as ever 15 years later (or, it was before covid).

A personal story: when I ran the marathon in 2018, I raised money for Tufts Medical Center (because, you know). Anna's has a great program for people or organizations wanting to raise funds: a "celebrity roller." For two hours, you roll $10 burritos (with chips and salsa) and all the money goes to your cause. With some help: rolling the burritos is harder than it looks. It was great fun, by the end of the night I was doing a pretty good job rolling, and they even gave me an Anna's hat! Plus, Michael kicked in another $500 on top of burrito sales.

So, yeah, Anna's might not have changed in the past 25 years, but that's okay. Long live Anna's.