Fargo - The three men waiting at the front door of the new burrito restaurant were dressed like they’d been camping. Puffy down jackets, boots and, they explained, layers of thermal underwear and flannel.

It was Adam Gibson’s idea to spend the night waiting for the first-day opening of the first Chipotle in North Dakota, at 1680 45th St. S., Fargo.

“I thought, ‘I really like Chipotle and I want to be the first to eat the burrito in North Dakota,’” he said.

Well, sort of.

Gibson said a friend of his works there but failed to invite him to the private pre-opening party, so he has to settle for being the first customer.

Lucky for him, he has a couple of buddies equipped with hardcore winter camping gear who also have a deep fondness for burritos made with environmentally sustainable ingredients.

Gibson, who hails from Rochester, Minn., and his friends, John Signorelli and Logan Dop, from Bloomington, Minn., were all used to having neighborhood Chipotles until they moved here to attend North Dakota State University.

For nearly 10 hours, they were the only people in line at Chipotle, huddled in a tent in the parking lot across the street from Happy Harry’s on 45th Street South. Alex Waters, another Chipotle nut transplanted from the Twin Cities, came at around 9 a.m. His loyal wife joined him in the cold at 10 a.m.

“This has to be the biggest thing to happen in North Dakota in the last decade – I think,” he deadpanned.

By the time Chipotle opened at 11 a.m., the line had grown to about 50 deep as people who had been staying warm in their cars came out. They let out a whoop as an employee swung the door wide.

Eating philosophically

Alex Waters speaks calmly and he sounds rational, but his love for Chipotle is beyond reason.

He said he’s always been a fan and even made the pilgrimage to the first Chipotle ever in Denver. “I’ve been to a number of first-day openings. I love those things.”

He went to Chipotle a lot when he lived in the Twin Cities, Waters said. At one point, he counted his receipts and realized he had eaten there 120 times in nine months, almost every other day.

At first, he couldn’t explain the cultish devotion.

“He’s in it; he can’t see what it’s like,” his wife chimed in.

“I think it’s the emphasis on fresh, local, sustainable ingredients,” Alex Waters said at last. “Chipotle was one of the first national chains that actually care about where this stuff comes from.”

That ethos is the same reason cited by Gibson and his buddies.

“They don’t sell queso because it’s not environmentally – you can’t make all-natural queso,” he said.

His favorite is the quesarrito, an off-menu item that is a cross between a burrito and quesadilla, though he said it takes a while to make so he won’t order it when the line is so long, because that would be rude.

Waters said with a dreamy look in his eyes that he planned to order the burrito carnitas. “Aww, the pork, the pork is so good. It’s slow roasted.”

Does it taste better because it’s sustainable?

“Probably not actually but, psychosomatically, yes,” he said.

Dop said he thinks it does because he feels good knowing the food was naturally raised.

listen live watch live