at all times of day, I defined a breakfast burrito as including egg (or scrambled tofu for vegan options) in its folds. Given the endless number of burritos served in L.A. I only stopped combing through neighborhoods in search of foil-wrapped torpedoes - some canvases for cheffy individualism, some inventions crisscrossing ingredients from around the globe, some basic energy bombs - when deadlines forced a halt. Its ubiquity was hastened by the advent of the fast-food frozen burrito in the 1950s - from the same Riverside family that supplied the original McDonald’s in San Bernardino with burger patties.Ī task like naming L.A.’s most stellar breakfast burritos could go on indefinitely. The Californian-Mexican connections made the burrito’s eventual presence in L.A. The origins of burritos, meals wrapped in flour tortillas for breakfast or otherwise, trace most credibly to Sonora, the northwestern state of Mexico where wheat has been cultivated since the 1500s.
Dining out for breakfast in Southern California is, at its finest, an expression of community and intersecting cultures: Yemeni shakshouka in Anaheim, broiled mackerel with miso soup and salt pickles in Little Tokyo, catfish and grits in Inglewood, banana pancakes the size of hubcaps in Hollywood.īut to narrow the morning meal in Los Angeles down to one emblem? It has to be the breakfast burrito.
