So I never took this blog all that seri­ously. I wanted to do it just for fun, and to keep myself occu­pied with some­thing cre­ative and pro­duc­tive in my spare time, instead of watch­ing TV. That sorta worked, as I often blog while I’m watch­ing TV. I’m handy with the mul­ti­task­ing. But any­way, my point is that I do this for fun, and didn’t ever really think of myself as a writer, or Jour­nal­ist, or Con­cert reviewer, or (for this blog, at least) a food critic. But then I got to think­ing about this entry about one of man’s great­est cre­ations, the BREAKFAST TACO!! (Thun­der claps.) I have often been over­heard to say to my friends that mankind is mostly a wash, with the excep­tion of Art, Music, and the Break­fast Taco. Other than that, not a whole lot of pos­i­tives there. Any­way, so as I was writ­ing this blog in my head and going over all my favorite break­fast tacos in Austin, I real­ized that I wasn’t as famil­iar with some good places as I should be. I had heard about some places, and had been to oth­ers, but not always recently enough to do this entry jus­tice. So I decided that I needed to be tak­ing a more pro­fes­sional, ded­i­cated approach to this blog. And that meant one thing:

Research.

That’s right. No more laz­ing around for me. I needed to do this right. So I went to any of my favorite break­fast taco places that I hadn’t been to in a while, and even checked out a few new ones I had heard good things about. I pretty much ate noth­ing but break­fast tacos for about 3 days. All this work and money invested in this endeavor is going to bring you this list. The ulti­mate list of Austin Break­fast Tacos, as com­piled by me, in no par­tic­u­lar order. Now I should say my usual break­fast taco is a Chorizo, Egg, and Cheese. For you grin­gos out there, Chorizo is a spicy mex­i­can sausage, usu­ally ground up, often found in break­fast food. Every once in a while I’ll add a Bacon, Egg, and Cheese to the list just for vari­ety. But I mostly stick to what I call the C.E.C. It’s also a lit­tle tricky for me because many places only have them in the morn­ing, or add a sur­charge if it’s after 2pm or so. That always bums me out, but I’ll do it any­way. Now here’s the places.

Gueros: These are prob­a­bly my num­ber one. I think it’s a com­bi­na­tion of the best Chorizo in town and really good cheese as well. They serve them until 4 with­out a sur­charge. They’re also really big, which is a nice thing. I like my Break­fast Tacos to be stag­ger­ing under their own weight, ready to explode all over you with the 1st bite. I don’t get them very often, because I usu­ally think of Gueros as a din­ner place, but when I do, my mouth does the Snoopy dance.

Maud­ies: Very solid. Not spec­tac­u­lar, but awfully good, and there’s a whole lot of Maud­ies around Austin, so you’re never far away. a com­fort­ing thought. I tend to like the Bacon ones here for some reason.

TacoDeli: So this is a lit­tle taco place off of Bar­ton Sky­way in Cen­tral Austin. It’s get­ting a really seri­ous rep­u­ta­tion around town, and for good rea­son. The break­fast tacos were pretty tasty. Their Chorizo is a lit­tle bland, but the tor­tilla was yummy and the cheese was shred­ded and white. Over­all, yummy.

Taco Shack: A newer entry, I went there for the 1st time a few weeks ago after hear­ing many of my stu­dents at one of the schools I teach at dis­cussing their glory. Wow, just really really good. And cheap. And fast. A park­ing lot would be nice, but I can’t com­plain. Also, it’s too far from my house. But that’s not their fault. Hav­ing Avo­cado as a top­ping is a nice option.

Ker­bey Lane/Magnolia: These two places I’ve been to a mil­lion times, and they both have good break­fast tacos in gen­eral. A lit­tle pricey, but yummy. Spe­cial shout out to the Mag­no­lia Late Night Break­fast Taco, which is Egg, Bacon, Cheese, and Avo­cado. 5.95 for two, but they’re sooooo good. I’ve eaten there after many a gig, and they’ll do the job right. Mag­no­lia can be really busy, but it’s worth it. They don’t have Chorizo, which is a neg­a­tive in my mind, but it’s all good. In my research I dis­cov­ered a few things. First of all, Mag­no­lia has some new menus, and they’re very slick. Too slick. They’re very much like a 50’s diner. Also, the Late Night Break­fast Tacos have been re-named and are now the Big Break­fast Taco. They’re also on the per­ma­nent menu, which is over­all a good thing.

So these are their offer­ings. On the left, a stan­dard Late Night/Big Break­fast taco. On the right is what hap­pens when you add Potato to your taco. Holy crap!! It’s like Home Fries exploded every­where! God. These things are really huge.

Jim’s: This is the only chain in my list, but Jim’s had some pretty nice, HUGE, tacos the last time I went there. The Chorizo wasn’t quite right, but the bacon was per­fect. And they had Cholula hot sauce, a nice addi­tion. I pre­fer Frank’s red hot, but that’s kind of New York I guess.

Juan in a Mil­lion: Now were talkin’ some seri­ous tacos. This place is awe­some. It’s get­ting pretty trendy, even for the east side, but Juan has the goods to back it up. I go with my old standby here, but they have this thing called the Don Juan Taco, and it’s sup­posed to be a great hang­over cure. I ate one once. Might I point out the one and the once. It was a sin­gle taco, but it was some­thing like 4 inches tall. It had so many things in it, I can’t even begin to list them all. I could look it up online, but I’ll just let your imag­i­na­tion go. I know it has potato, which in gen­eral is not a ingre­di­ent I like in a taco, but it worked here. I was so stuffed after­wards that I could barely move. I drive by there on Sun­days on my way to soft­ball, and I’m always see­ing a line out the door now. They also have a nice patio, but it’s get­ting a lit­tle crowded. Juan him­self is always run­ning around greet­ing peo­ple with “Hello my Friend! So good to see you!” and a big hand­shake. Love that. Also good prices. Only open until the early after­noon as well.

El Sol Y La Luna: This is another cool place on South Con­gress, or SoCo as they’re now call­ing it. They have really yummy tacos, and if you’re lucky they’ll have plan­tains, which is the best thing ever. They also have a really nice patio that looks out on the street, which is nice for some reason.

Curra’s: Another one in the Din­ner type place, I went here specif­i­cally for the blog. I don’t think they lived up to the rest of the menu, which is out of this world, but they were good. They toast the tor­tillas, which makes for a crispier taco, and they also were a lit­tle skimpy on the fill­ing. But still yummy, and I think I ate them in about ten sec­onds apiece.

Taque­ria Val­larta Jalisco: This is prob­a­bly the secret place on my list, along with TacoDeli. This is a real seri­ous lit­tle Mex­i­can place on the cor­ner of S. Con­gress and William Can­non. The rea­son I put Mex­i­can in bold is that it’s pretty much full of mex­i­cans, and the wait­staff don’t usu­ally speak eng­lish. This is a lit­tle scary because my span­ish bor­ders between tragic and hor­rific, but with a lit­tle point­ing I can get my order across. But any­way, my par­ents love this place, my Mother for the Chicken Tor­tilla soup, my Father for the Meundo, which if you’ve never had it, is more or less like a smelly foot boiled into a broth. Gross. But the break­fast tacos are first rate, made spe­cial by the many vari­eties, most notably the nopil­iatos, which for those of you who don’t know is Cac­tus. It’s not my favorite thing, but I’ve had it a few times, and it’s pretty inter­est­ing. It tastes sort of like a very mild green pep­per. And they’re super cheap. They also have really good 3 dol­lar bur­ri­tos, but that’s a dif­fer­ent entry.

Hick­ory Street: This is one I wasn’t plan­ning on, and it’s not tech­ni­cally a break­fast taco, more of a bur­rito. But they were tasty. And huge. So huge that the wait­ress tried to stop me from order­ing two. I want two, ma’am. Oh yes, I do.

Taco Cabana: Ok, I lied. There’s going to be another chain in my list. See, what hap­pened is that I real­ized I was hun­gry while I was writ­ing this. So of course I had to go get a break­fast taco, right? Prob­lem is it’s about 1-am, and most places are closed. I decide to make a run for the other bor­der, and check out their wares. And hon­estly, it’s not too bad. A lit­tle slop­pily made, and their tor­tillas aren’t the best. But there’s plenty of cheese and chorizo inside, which is a plus. They’re also pretty well stuffed too. Taco Cabana also has a top­pings bar inside where you can get a few fun things to put in your taco, like Salsa and Pico de Gallo if you so desire. I added a lit­tle raw onion just for fun. The tacos are also only 99 cents for two ingre­di­ents. Adding the cheese to the egg and chorizo added only 35 cents, so for 4.35 with tax I got 3 tacos, with onions for taste. True, one of them did have a small piece of let­tuce cooked into it, which is a bit dis­turb­ing, but I pulled it out before I ate it. TC has a drive through, and is open 24 hours, which is a big plus for some­one like me who often has odd hours. I just noticed that this is the longest entry so far, and I’m start­ing to sound like Rachel Ray. Any­way, these aren’t as good as the other tacos on the list, but they’re not bad, and con­sid­er­ing that Taco Cabana has roughly 8000 loca­tions in Austin, I’m sure I’ll be hav­ing more of these.

And last and least, a dis­hon­or­able men­tion to What­taburger. I had heard they had good tacos, so I decided, against my bet­ter judge­ment, to check them out. For one, they call their tacos taquitos, which as far as I can tell is Span­ish for crappy lit­tle taco. They’re not cheap, and they don’t even have Chorizo. So for 9 bucks I got 3 tacos and a soda. They were not very big, and the cheese they used was so nasty that when it was melted it gave off a runny yel­low water that fell all over my hands and my clean shirt while I was dri­ving to my les­son. Yuck! I think that means it’s not even real cheese, but some kind of cheese food prod­uct gunk. Gross. I think I really don’t like What­taburger. I’ve been there 3 times, and 2 times it was bad, and the one good time I lost track of time and was really late for a gig. Bad Karma there or something.