Joe's Bakery & Coffee Shop

The family-run Joe's Bakery & Coffee Shop is an East Side staple that’s been around since 1962. If you’ve never been, or it’s been a while, you should immediately make plans to go. Now that you’ve done that, great. More about Joe’s: It’s a breakfast and lunch spot that’s basically a Tex-Mex/Mexican diner with a counter and booths, and a jukebox playing Tejano jams in the background. There are dishes like pancakes, huevos ranchero, crispy tacos, and enchiladas. The breakfast is phenomenal and served all day—which is why there’s often a wait on weekends, when the place is filled with East Side regulars, UT kids, construction workers, city officials, and families after church on Sundays.

People are waiting for the breakfast tacos made with fluffy house-made flour tortillas, especially the miga taco con todo, which adds in pico de gallo to their excellent migas taco. The super-crispy bacon at Joe’s defies the laws of pork belly physics—either order it as a side or add it to your breakfast taco, where it’ll hang out on top like the tortilla is a hammock that’s too small. And don’t miss the carne guisada. Here it's made with pork, with meat so tender that it rivals anything a fancy French restaurant is braising. Joe’s is also a bakery with a huge variety of pan dulce—make sure to get some pink cake and conchas on the way out.

photo credit: Richard Casteel

photo credit: Richard Casteel

photo credit: Richard Casteel

photo credit: Richard Casteel

photo credit: Richard Casteel

Food Rundown

photo credit: Richard Casteel

Migas

Like The Legend of Zelda or a 1964 Pontiac GTO muscle car, the migas at Joe’s are classic, legendary, and genre-defining. There might be many imitators, but very few come close to achieving the near-perfect blend of soft scrambled eggs and slightly crispy tortillas, all topped with cheese.

photo credit: Richard Casteel

Breakfast Tacos

The breakfast tacos at Joe’s are made with fluffy, lightly-griddled house-made flour tortillas. While you can just get a migas plate (that comes with tortillas so you can make your own mini-tacos), by ordering breakfast tacos you can order a variety of different things. Our standard order is a migas taco, a bacon, egg, and cheese taco, and a carne guisada taco.

photo credit: Richard Casteel

Bacon

The crispy bacon at Joe’s is about as peak bacon as your life will get. It’s dredged in flour, chilled overnight, and cooked on a griddle, resulting in slices of bacon that are flat, keep their shape, and are more evenly cooked than the standard curly bacon you’ll find at a lot of places. You should order a side to share.

photo credit: Richard Casteel

Pan Dulce

It’s called Joe's Bakery & Coffee Shop for a reason, and that’s because part of the operation is in fact a bakery. You can tell by the big glass cases with a wide variety of pan dulce by the entrance. Joe’s is probably most well known for their pink cake, and you can order some to have as an appetizer while you wait for your table, or grab some on the way out.