There should be a breakfast burrito horoscope that wraps your current mood and energy into the right burrito style.
Feeling energetic and ambitious? Look for something foil-wrapped, with limitless possibilities. Think tater tots, sour cream, salsa macha and pickled jalapeños.
Need to feel grounded and steady? I see a tube of classic, fluffy scrambled eggs, melted cheese and some form of crispy potato in your future.
Maybe someone reading this will be inspired to create a burrito astrology calendar. An app that takes my Virgo neuroses — I mean particularities — and translates them into the precisely calibrated breakfast burrito my morning requires. A neat, toasted, well-sealed tortilla with no leakage. A construction built on harmonious ingredients with equal ratios, cut to roughly the same size. It’s giving balance, control, routine. A burrito that will quietly hold my life together.
Wrapstrology / BurritoScope doesn’t exist (yet). But I’ve been finding breakfast burrito nirvana at Masa y Taza.
Earlier this summer, my colleague Bill Addison put together a collection of the 16 best breakfast burritos in Los Angeles. I’m going to add one more destination to your must-try list.
Masa y Taza is a cafe on the western edge of the 4th Street Corridor in Long Beach, perpetually buzzing between the opening hours of 7 a.m. and 2 or 3 p.m. At midmorning, there’s a line out the door, and a dining room full of families, run clubs and sleepy-eyed couples all gripping breakfast burritos.
“I’ve always been that early-morning person that grabs a breakfast burrito and a Coke and tries to come back to life,” says chef-owner Gabriel Pulido.
After spending years working in fine dining, and most recently as the executive chef at Bourbon Steak in Glendale, Pulido partnered with a childhood best friend to open Masa y Taza. And there was never any doubt that the focus of his first restaurant would be breakfast burritos.
“I lived in the Valley for a while and would go to all of those little Greek hamburger spots in NoHo and Burbank and the Corner Cottage,” he says. “I grew up in Whittier and would spend a lot of time in Seal Beach, Huntington Beach and Long Beach and hit up all of the old-school breakfast burrito places like Nick’s Deli.”
Pulido’s burritos are hulking masses of soft scrambled eggs, refried beans, potato and melted cheese wrapped in tortillas thin enough to reveal whether you ordered the red or green chorizo.
The flour tortillas are Chihuahua-style, delicately flaky, but dense and pliable enough to prevent leakage. Pulido tapped into core childhood memories of visiting family in Chihuahua to achieve just the right flavor and consistency.
“Every morning we’d wake up to the distinct smell of flour tortillas being cooked on the plancha,” says Pulido. “And it just enveloped the whole city.”
That warm, toasty scent hangs in the air at Masa y Taza, combined with the deep, smoky aromas of chorizo.
Pulido prepares both a red pork chorizo and a green chicken chorizo for the burritos and a handful of breakfast tacos. The first incorporates a heady blend of cinnamon, clove, garlic, various chile powders and guajillo paste for a fruity, earthy flavor that’s mildly smoky.
The green is equally luscious in texture, made with chicken thigh and skin, but intensely herbaceous, brightened with parsley, cilantro, poblano and jalapeño.
They both make for excellent burrito fillings, seeping into every crevice of folded egg and cheese. If you’re open to sour cream and guacamole in your burrito, the El Ranchero is wonderfully maximalist. The choice of protein filling is up to you, but the red chorizo offers a molten, goopy center that reminds me of the chile relleno burritos at La Azteca. The kind of burrito you can’t put down until the last fold is finished for fear that you might lose a clump of the insides.
The deep red color of the chorizo will stain your mouth and anything it touches. If you spy a red rim around my lips, you know where I’ve been.
Like all of the burrito-centric businesses popping up around Los Angeles, Pulido offers an impressive array of salsa and condiments to drizzle or dunk in. The creamy chipotle is a superlative pink sauce, with a familiar smokiness heightened by the addition of garlic confit, lime and vinegar. The crema jalapeño eats like a jalapeño and cilantro ranch.
My favorite might be the salsa macha, chunky with dried chiles and a touch of fennel. Pulido also pours the stuff on golden tiles of fried potatoes.
Today’s breakfast burrito horoscope: You’re greeting the day a little nutty, spicy and impossible to ignore. This morning calls for a burrito with a sturdy foundation of eggs, potato, cheese and chorizo. Resist the urge to over-customize your selections. Stick to the essentials and trust the burrito fold. Your lucky topping is avocado. Your cosmic message is: You don’t need to have the entire day figured out before breakfast.
The post One more breakfast burrito to add to your must-try list appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
