Monday, March 21, 2011

Austin's Best Breakfast Tacos

Every morning I was in Austin, I would wake up and try to shake off the audio overstimulation from the previous night's SXSW shows (think Mardi Gras for musically-inclined misfits) by getting myself properly caffeinated and going on a short run through the city's rolling hills. Next on the list was to try to find the best breakfast tacos within arm's reach. The entire city seems to be fueled by breakfast tacos -- and why not? They are inexpensive, filling, and available from every restaurant, food truck and roadside stand in sight.

In their simplest form, a breakfast taco is eggs (usually scrambled) in a corn or flour tortilla, and it just gets better from there. Fold in some tomatoes, onions, and tortilla chips, and you have got yourself a migas breakfast taco. The concept is so simple, but incredibly delicious. Every place has an a-la-carte breakfast taco menu where you get to decide whether have them with potato and onion, or sausage, or nopalitos...or anything you can think of, really.

Torchy's Tacos, whose slogan is "damn good tacos," was the clear winner in the fight for the best breakfast taco in my opinion. My favorite of the breakfast tacos I tried was The Dirty Sanchez (I didn't name it, I just ordered it) which starts with scrambled eggs just like all of the rest, but then Torchy's adds avocado, shredded cheese, deep fried poblano chilies, and pickled carrots. The whole thing is then topped with a sour cream based poblano sauce. It's the kind of rich, salty, smoky, comfort food that actually makes you happy it is morning.

So what would you put into your breakfast taco?