Ever since I opened up a small latino-themed restaurant my partner Javier Burillo and I have been at loggerheads about which tacos are the best for breakfast. I do bow my head to Javier and his knowledge of Mexican cuisine but I also trust my taste buds and I know what sells. To settle the debate which we have had for all of this time we both decided to take a trial and error approach to it, and see what the locals love. We have a lot of latinos coming into the place as you can imagine, who will tell you in a heartbeat if you’re getting it wrong. Here has been the experience so far.
Keep It Original
In an effort to get more people ini the restaurant we trialled some ‘American-style’ breakfast tacos with bacon, eggs and hash browns, and they bombed pretty spectacularly, which we kind of predicted. The truth is that much like doing a pizza made with taco dough and pastor meat, crossing cultures in such a way is something which you should just ignore.
Meats
More often than not when we think about tacos we think about delicious meat fillings and when you translate that to breakfast you need to make a couple of tweaks. Now if you go for tacos in somewhere like Mexico City then you’ll find all meats available at all hours, but up here we just need to choose a little smarter in order to make sales. The best meats for this time of day are going to be the likes of chorizo and longaniza, these go down an absolute storm and they work brilliantly with eggs. Don’t forget some lashings of cheese too, monterrey jack or Oaxaca will be fine, everyone needs protein right?
Chili
Many restaurants which we have been to will go way to soft on the heat for their breakfast tacos and I can understand that train of thought, nobody wants their heads blown off first thing. My opinion however is that a good kick of chili in the morning is exactly what you need to shake off the cobwebs and get your brain into gear. For me this is basically the food equivalent of coffee and there is no reason why you shouldn’t light a fire under your breakfast tacos.
Veg
I actually tend to go heavier on veg with the breakfast tacos than we do with the rest and again this is just about getting the right things in your body to get the day started. As with all other tacos we’ll come in with onion and cilantro but I’ll also do a tasty pico de gallo and plenty of avocado, packed with nutrients which people are going to love for the day ahead.
From all of what we have tried this mixture has been far and away the tastiest and the best approach to delivering on breakfast tacos for our customers.