LAGuide
The Best Breakfast Burritos In Los Angeles
The 20 best spots in LA to get your breakfast burrito fix.
Most days, breakfast might involve a scarfing down a bowl of cold cereal or tolerating a cup of stale coffee in front of a computer screen. But once in a while, perhaps after a long night out, you find yourself craving a breakfast burrito. And let's be honest, the best one is usually the one closest to you, right? Except here in LA, land of endless breakfast burrito options, you owe it to yourself to seek out the really great ones, from cheese-stuffed behemoths with extra salsa on the side to meaty masterpieces involving four different kinds of chorizo. So the next time you feel like starting the morning right, check out this list of our favorite places to get a breakfast burrito across the city.
THE SPOTS
This order-at-the-window spot in Chinatown makes delicious tortas like the “Baja Shrimp Po’Boy” with pico de gallo and salsa negra and the “Saguaro,” which comes with tempura-fried zucchini and ricotta cheese. Elsewhere on the menu though, there are two breakfast burritos that deserve your undivided attention. If you’re in the mood for meat (and a lot of it), the “Hey Porky’s” is packed with perfectly roasted pork shoulder, scrambled eggs, black beans, queso Oaxaca, and a slightly spicy salsa verde. The “Atwater,” on the other hand, comes with shiitake mushrooms, roasted peppers, scrambled eggs, salsa, and braised leeks for some added acidity. Both are equally excellent, it just depends if you’re looking for something lighter or want to get your only meal of the day over with early.
Macheen, which pops-up on weekdays at Boyle Heights’ Milpa Grille, offers a birria breakfast burrito stuffed with crispy tater tots and cotija cheese. If that combination of words isn’t enough to get your mind racing, we might have to reexamine our friendship. Their crunchy, saucy burrito can also be made with excellent crispy pork belly or longanisa, but we might be most partial to the rich braised beef option, which drips spicy broth all over the scrambled eggs tucked inside. If you can't make it to Milpa Grille during the week, Macheen also serves their burritos at Smorgasburg on Sundays.
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Humberto “The Chori-Man” Raygoza mostly sells his famed chorizos and meats to restaurants, but you can also walk into his shop on a residential street in San Pedro for a truly fantastic breakfast burrito. There are four different varieties of chorizo you can add to any of their dishes, and while they’re all good, we especially like the poblano chili-heavy Tolucan Green, made with pork.
East LA’s La Azteca makes some of the best flour tortillas in the city. They’re soft and light but still firm, and whatever they’re wrapped around is bound to be one of the best burritos you’ll ever eat. The carne asada, potato, and fried egg option here is a work of art, but if you want to take it to the next level, ask them to add a chile relleno. Adding these fried chiles stuffed with cheese into a breakfast burrito is an absolute revelation. Expect a line if you’re there on a weekend, so go grab a coffee and a pastry from El Gallo Bakery next door while you wait.
All Day Baby is one our favorite places in Silver Lake to have a walk-in brunch, excellent breakfast sandwich, and gorgeous golden biscuits. Luckily, their breakfast burrito is no exception. Like any good burrito, it comes wrapped in foil and weighs as much as a newborn baby. Plus, it’s filled with staples like smoky longaniza sausage, refried beans, fried eggs, and salsa. We like that they’re not trying to reinvent the wheel here, and instead just serve a nice, hefty burrito that we’d happily eat any morning/early afternoon/late afternoon of the week.
What you find at Lowkey Burritos, a weekly pop-up operating in Torrance and Long Beach, is different from anything else is town. These burritos are definitely big, but what sets them apart is the high-quality, grass-fed marinated tri-tip, or tremendous, thick-cut bacon alongside excellent eggs, grilled vegetables, and hash browns. Oh, and each burrito comes with a crispy layer of griddled cheese and jalapeño on the outside, a genius addition that takes these burritos to the next level.
Sundays By Wake & Late is a bonafide DTLA breakfast burrito specialist. The steak burrito is our move here—it involves medium-rare sirloin, avocado, pickled jalapeños, fluffy scrambled eggs, and more tater tots than a middle school lunch plate (this is a good thing). Their house hot sauce on the side is excellent, and the tater tots are an ideal filling, because you can never have enough tater tots. The vegetarian version is also great.
If you’re a person who prefers beans over potatoes in their breakfast burritos, Lily’s is probably number one on your list in LA. This tiny Malibu spot serves burritos the size of newborns, stuffed with refried beans, bacon, fluffy scrambled eggs, and cheese. Ask for all three salsas on the side, and make sure you call your order in ahead of time so you don’t have to wait.
The breakfast burrito at Cafe Los Feliz is kind of the only good thing about this extremely popular (i.e., crowded) brunch spot. The place is very on-brand for Los Feliz—long lines, décor that hasn’t changed since the early 2000’s, servers who are mentally juggling 5000 different things at any given time—but wow, is that breakfast burrito a work of beauty. The standard one that comes with eggs, bacon, melted cheddar jack and chipotle sauce is great, but it’s the special (spot it on a handwritten sign next to the register) you want. Wrapped inside is soujuk, a spicy, dry-cured Armenian sausage that lends a nice kick and extra heft to the burrito.
The first thing you should know about El Burrito House, a small storefront in the city of Bell, is that they make their own flour tortillas: stretchy, pillowy things that are soft and chewy and deeply flavorful. Those heavenly fresh tortillas are used to wrap all kinds of burritos here, breakfast and otherwise, but in the morning we zero in on their chile verde breakfast burrito, made with tender chunks of potatoes, well-cooked eggs, gooey streaks of cheese, and their spicy long-stewed pork chile verde. Think of it as a whole combo plate bundled up to-go. As with all good homestyle food, it takes a while to prepare, so if you’re in a rush, call in your order first.
The hulking Dispatch Hall Burrito at Isaac’s Cafe in Wilmington is so named for its apparent popularity with workers at the longshoreman staff hall just across the street. And frankly, it’s hard to imagine a better breakfast if you’re moving around thousands of pounds of freight at the Port of LA each day. It’s filled with fluffy rice and stewed beans, soft and cheesy scrambled eggs, crisp bacon, and they don't skimp on the avocado. They’ll even let you substitute in carne asada if that’s your thing. We suggest asking for an extra cup of their unique salsa verde, which is sharp and tangy from raw tomatillos.
The neatly wrapped Hot Pocket of a breakfast burrito served at Kumquat Coffee contains all the important elements: Chunks of seasoned potato? Check. Soft scrambled eggs? That’s right. Gooey cheese that joyfully squirts all over the place with every bite? Indeed. But it’s the addition of caramelized garlic confit that sets the breakfast burrito at this Highland Park coffee shop apart. The garlic flavor isn’t too pungent to eat in the morning, but it does heighten the other elements around it—we especially like it paired with their juicy turkey sausage (you can also order it with bacon for crunch). These burritos typically take about 15 minutes to prepare, so place a pickup order ahead of time via their website.
We still aren’t totally sure what String’s Of Life’s name means, but it might have something to do with their breakfast burrito, which has brought us back to life several times after a boozy Saturday night. Similar to their excellent breakfast sandwich, SOL’s burrito stands out because of the use of simple, fresh ingredients that taste great together. There’s a fluffy omelette, mushroom, cheese, arugula, avocado, and a slice thick, fatty bacon. The star of the dish though is undoubtedly the crispy potato cake hiding in the middle. With its crispy, salty crust, it provides a big pop of crunch without overpowering the other ingredients.
Cofax is, at its core, a coffee shop. But this Fairfax spot also happens to serve some of the best breakfast burritos in the city. We have a hard time choosing between the chorizo and the vegetable versions, both of which are chopped up with smoked potatoes to make a really excellent hash. So get one of each, or just come back tomorrow. Also remember to grab a jar of salsa to-go while you’re there.
The move at Piroshki Bakery in North Hollywood is their "French-Russian 3-Cheese Breakfast Burrito," a handheld masterpiece involving American, cheddar, and melted feta cheese, rolled up with your choice of protein (seasoned ground beef, bacon, ham, or pepperoni), plus potatoes and chives. We’re not exactly sure what makes this burrito French-Russian—the seasoning in the ground beef? the spicy sauce on the side?—but we do love that the whole packages gets air-fried for a crispy outer layer that crackles and a gooey inner layer that even the most dairy-sensitive among us would be appreciate.
Tacos Villa Corona serves outstanding breakfast burritos from a walk-up window in Atwater Village. The options are pretty straightforward—either papas, chilaquiles, or nopales, but all three are great, and can be customized with your choice of meats. We prefer the papas, because they’re cooked until they’re just about as soft as mashed potatoes. The burrito is rolled up with some egg and cheese, and your choice of meat—which should be chorizo—then is pressed until it’s nice and toasty on the outside. Make sure to dab on some of their incredible (and extremely spicy) hot sauce.
Doubting Thomas is another coffee shop with a very poorly kept secret: The tremendous Doubtless Burrito. This one is stuffed with crispy braised pork shoulder, smoked white cheddar, smashed Yukon potatoes, tomatillo salsa, smoked chili, and runny sunny-side up eggs. If it sounds like too much of a good thing, you’re wrong, because it’s the exact right amount of a bunch of good things.
Run by the same people are Guerrilla Tacos around the corner, Guerrilla Cafecito is a tiny cafe in the Arts District open 8-11am daily. The GTLA Burrito is fantastic—there’s tender sirloin steak accompanied by avocado, chile de arbol salsa, and super-crispy hash browns. It’s all wrapped in a burrito coated in melted jack cheese. Don’t leave without one of their basketball-sized milk-and-lemon donuts, either.
Subtlety is rarely what we look for in breakfast burritos, but at Great White, it’s the small flourishes that set their tater tot, egg, and bacon-based burrito apart. First is the chipotle aioli, which adds an excellent creaminess to the whole thing, and second are the roasted scallions and chives, which infuse some fresh herbiness into the dish, and takes this Venice spot’s burrito to the next level.
Corner Cottage is an old-school spot in Burbank serving no-nonsense breakfast burritos involving eggs, hash browns, cheese, and your choice of meat (we usually go for bacon and sausage). But what makes them so good is the salsa—it’s pepper-heavy, fresh-tasting, and very spicy. Ask for it inside the burrito, and then for more on the side, because you can never have too much of it.
