If you’re a breakfast burrito fan, there’s no better pocket of Los Angeles to reside in than Pasadena.
There are formidable breakfast burritos to be devoured all over Greater Los Angeles and Orange County. Your favorite will always be the best, and I will contradict myself in about eight minutes when I tell you to head to Sawtelle for another a.m.-altering breakfast burrito. But with two Lucky Boy Burgers, a location of Wake and Late, two Dog Haus restaurants and the new BBAD, I’m drawn to the 626 area code when the need for a tortilla-wrapped potato, egg and cheese torpedo beckons. And it beckons often.
What makes a great breakfast burrito great, of course, is the insides, the way the melted cheese fuses with the crispy potatoes on a cushion of fluffy eggs. And the construction accounts for half of the burrito’s appeal. A good flour tortilla will make up for a litany of sins, including mushy potatoes. The ingredients should be properly distributed, a homogeneous blend without dry or empty pockets. And acid and moisture are key, often supplied by a pickled onion, jalapeño or dipping sauce.
For the uninitiated, Lucky Boy Burgers is a decades-old Pasadena institution known for its monster breakfast burritos. It’s a restaurant that comes up during any serious conversation regarding the genre. The burritos are filled with home fries-ish bits of potato, cheddar cheese, three eggs cooked on the griddle, sausage or fried bacon. It’s nothing fancy, but it’s consistent and the ratio of protein to potato and egg to cheese make for a first-rate burrito.
Wake and Late perfected the breakfast burrito formula, then spread quickly, with a large commissary kitchen and cafe in Pasadena and locations all over the city. They’re compact, tightly bound bundles filled with soft scrambled eggs, tater tots, the protein of your choice, cheese and avocado. The cilantro cream, chipotle aioli and hot sauce have been imitated by what seems like every breakfast burrito operation that followed.
BBAD
My current favorite is BBAD, a breakfast burrito-centric restaurant that opened out of a tiny storefront off the lobby of the Pasadena Hotel and Pool.
The burritos are often lumpy, with big boulders that stretch the tortilla to its limits. Those bulges protruding like alien offspring are potato, dozens of layers stacked and compressed into golden squares with crisp edges. Even nestled into a tortilla with hot eggs, cheese and steam, the potatoes retain their crunch on the drive home. They are what sets the burritos apart, and make them so incredibly labor-intensive.
When chef-owner Jason Hobbs was conceptualizing his burrito, he wanted a form of potato that wouldn’t taste like everyone else‘s. He grew up eating breakfast burritos daily in his hometown of Salinas, a major agricultural hub in central California. Every day, on the way to elementary school, he would visit a friend’s house where a family member was preparing breakfast burritos.
Instead of tots, hash browns or home fries, Hobbs makes what he calls the punk rock potato pavé. He takes gossamer slices of potato and dunks them into ice water, vinegar and salt for a 15-minute pickle. Then he lays them out in three to four dozen overlapping layers before squeezing out any excess moisture. The potatoes are cooked low and slow in the oven, then compressed overnight. They’re cubed and deep-fried to order.
“It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” says Hobbs, who for decades worked in the music industry. “We do about 100 pounds on Monday and that kind of gets us ahead. 100 pounds Tuesday and then about 50 pounds a day from there.”
Hobbs moved to San Diego, where breakfast burrito culture was just as prevalent, then on to West Hollywood.
“Twenty years ago, I’d go to brunch in WeHo and for whatever reason, the breakfast burritos stopped at like 10 a.m.,” he says. “That’s when I told a friend that there really needs to be a breakfast burrito spot that serves past 11 a.m. So this idea has been in my head for like 20 years.”
For the past 15 years, he’s been looking for a space to make breakfast burritos all day. In 2016, he started selling burritos at a farmers market in West Hollywood, and in August 2024, he opened BBAD, which stands for breakfast burritos all day.
Hobbs’ burritos are meticulously crafted. The bacon is crumbled, preventing any big, stringy bits from spilling out. The base of his hot sauce starts with 50 pounds of caramelized onion, caramelized garlic and dried New Mexico chiles. There’s an order to how the burritos are built, with potatoes first, then eggs, cheese, bacon and “sauce, sauce, sauce.”
“You don’t go out of order and have cold eggs,” he says. “I know this is insane.”
To make his chile verde, Hobbs slow-roasts both pork shoulder and belly for close to six hours. He uses the broth to cook his tomatillos, then builds on that tart, citrusy flavor with caramelized onion, cilantro and a whisper of heat from serrano peppers. The burrito, $17, has the depth and heft of a full breakfast plate, with the pork from the chile verde melting into the sauce, the potatoes like a crunchy prize in each bite and the eggs soft and supple.
It’s the sort of breakfast burrito you could crave all day.
Dog Haus
Are you familiar with Josh Elkin? I’ve been following him on Instagram for years. He’s a content creator who takes two or three seemingly unrelated, incompatible foods, ideas or genres and mashes them together into a single Frankenstein creation. Just last week, I watched him make a jerk chicken taco on a Jamaican patty shell.
Elkin partnered with the Dog Haus restaurant chain in January to come up with limited menu items. The most recent is the bacon and sausage breakfast chimichanga, available now through June 3.
Before someone jumps into the comments, fingers flying across the keyboard to argue that a chimichanga isn’t a breakfast burrito, I’d argue that it is. It’s a breakfast burrito that takes a dip in the deep fryer. A completely unnecessary but welcome modification.
The staff at the original Pasadena Dog Haus location wrap the burritos like giant pieces of hard candy, tucked into white paper with the two ends twisted shut.
Elkin’s chimichanga is stuffed with three scrambled eggs, chopped cheese and sausage along with bacon crumbles, tater tots and miso-infused ranch. It’s wrapped in a flour tortilla that transforms into a golden, flaky pastry in the deep fryer. The insides are nearly molten. The miso ranch seeps into the egg, only recognizable as a slight tang that’s detectable in select bites. The chimichanga comes with a side of maple Sriracha sauce for dipping. Get an extra cup of the miso ranch too. In the spirit of Elkin’s anything-goes approach to food, go nuts.
Sobuneh
The breakfast burritos from this Sawtelle ghost kitchen are reminiscent of the Wake and Late burritos, only heftier. And the signature chipotle honey sauce was inspired by the sweet-and-spicy condiment from Gracias Señor Taqueria, the food truck that for years set up shop in front of the Ralphs in Pacific Palisades.
The breakfast burrito was Ethan Banayan’s preferred meal after a basketball game or workout. During the pandemic, he started cooking his own, making each of the components from scratch and posting the results on Instagram. In May 2023, he quit his job in commercial real estate and partnered with friends Omeed Minoofar and Ryan Elyahouzadeh to start making breakfast burritos full-time. By September of that year, the three were hosting breakfast burrito pop-ups in Elyahouzadeh’s backyard. And in early 2024, they started selling their burritos out of the Colony commercial kitchen space in Sawtelle.
The Signature is the first burrito Banayan made. He’s still tweaking, attempting to reach breakfast burrito nirvana with each new iteration of chorizo and black beans, egg and cheese.
He cooks his black beans with avocado leaves and butter. They act as a spread that sort of glues all the components together.
The chorizo is a mix of ground beef and turkey, seasoned with fruity guajillos and smoky chile de árbol, lime and fresh jalapeños. There’s half an avocado in each burrito, with hunks of the creamy fruit giving the middle a uniform luxurious texture. The Signature gets a drizzle of both honey chipotle sauce and cilantro lime aioli, but I’d suggest ordering an extra side of each for dipping.
“The one question that everyone asks us is why it’s called Sobuneh,” Banayan says. “It means breakfast in Farsi. It’s Sundays around the table, hanging around, a sacred time to spend with family and the people you care about most.”
Where to get your next favorite burrito
BBAD, 928 E. Colorado Blvd., #101 Pasadena, (626)214-5731, bbad.la
Dog Haus, 105 N. Hill Ave., Suite 104, Pasadena, (626) 577-4287, pasadena.doghaus.com
Sobuneh, 11419 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles, (310) 824-3799, sobuneh.com