The Best Breakfast Tacos in NYC

Tacos are the perfect breakfast food: portable, filling vehicles for salsa and hot sauce, an ideal companion for coffee. Sometimes they have eggs, sometimes it’s just a great taco that you eat before you do anything else—we don’t judge. We’ve eaten a lot of morning tacos, so we can say with confidence that these are the best breakfast tacos in NYC.

The Spots

The team behind ham specialists & Sons have a breakfast taco spot just a few doors down from their ham bar in Prospect Lefferts Gardens. Mockingbird is a tiny takeout window with just four taco options on its menu—each one costs $6 and an order of two makes for a solid meal. Prioritize the bacon, egg, and cheese option that comes with two slabs of extra crispy pork, rich cheddar, and a soft flour tortilla. And since this popular neighborhood spot is open from 7am till everything sells out, we suggest getting here early and enjoying everything at one of their picnic tables out front.

Walking into Yellow Rose on a weekend morning is the closest you’ll get in NYC to pulling over at a pit stop in Texas. Before you receive your orange tray of excellent breakfast tacos, you’ll hear Willie Nelson playing through the speakers, spot a poster of Dolly Parton glamorously overseeing business from above, and notice the bags of stone-ground grits and heirloom beans on a shelf in front of a saloon-style swinging door. In addition to options like smoked bacon and egg, bean and cheese, or carne guisada tacos on fresh flour tortillas, Yellow Rose serves a rotating menu of glazed and sugar-covered doughnuts for breakfast on weekends, all of which rank among the best we’ve eaten as of late.

You can get King David tacos at a number of carts across Brooklyn and Manhattan (Madison Square Park, just outside Prospect Park, or in FiDi), along with an ever-growing number of coffee shops. But their first brick-and-mortar in Prospect Heights has a slightly more expanded menu, and even though it's still grab-and-go, there are a few tables outside. Along with all of their classic breakfast tacos, you’ll find a few all-day tacos and some really tangy queso here, which you should order with chorizo. The two new tacos—the Cowboy (steak, potato, eggs, and cheddar) and the Pollo Verde (shredded chicken, verde migas, and white cheddar cheese)—taste like meaty love letters to on-the-go eating, and should always be accompanied with a Topo Chico or iced horchata.

This Greenpoint brunch pop-up offers “double decker” breakfast tacos on Tuesdays between 9am-1pm at Getaway. And just in case you haven’t been to Taco Bell in a while, know that “double decker” just means you get a crunchy taco shell wrapped in a flour tortilla with some refried black beans in the middle to hold the two together. Blue Light serves a vegetarian take on this Taco Bell classic, involving scrambled eggs, avocado, soyrizo, and green salsa. And these creamy, crunchy breakfast tacos can also be made vegan upon request.

This Sunset Park bakery makes our favorite conchas and cafe con leche in Brooklyn seven days a week, but on weekends you can come here for excellent tacos, too. Grab a seat at the counter and watch the ebb and flow of regulars come through this popular neighborhood spot. Order the huevos a la Mexicana and you’ll get a plate of scrambled eggs with a heap of griddled vegetables, perfectly-seasoned beans, and tortillas. If the Sunday scaries have you hiding under the covers, this will make going out into the world feel worthwhile. 

Whoever said that only tacos with eggs in them count as breakfast tacos hasn’t lived. Don Pepe Jugos y Tortas is a chaotic taqueria in Sunset Park, and they make all kinds of tacos all day, so if you want birria for breakfast, go for it. The front section of the restaurant is a juice bar, so get a massive plastic cup of liquid vegetables (we love the Greens’N’Ginger smoothie) and make it a fully balanced meal. 

We love Dimes for breakfast because it offers a rare opportunity to enjoy the trendy, minimalist space in relative peace and quiet, and because  the restaurant responsible for this micro-neighborhood also happens to make great breakfast tacos. You’ll get a cheesy, spicy combo of scrambled eggs with tomatillo salsa, cheddar, jalapeño, and hot sauce inside a corn tortilla, which you can enjoy with a cup of great third-wave coffee in relative peace and quiet.