Do You Call Them Breakfast Tacos or Breakfast Burritos?

“Would a taco by any other name taste as sweet?”

By Garrett HeathJune 8, 2015 8:08 am

Garrett Heath, who arrived in San Antonio in 2005, is a food writer for SA Flavor. He stopped by the Texas Standard to talk about his theory on breakfast burritos vs. breakfast tacos. Below is an excerpt from his original post – you can read it in full here


 

One of the staples in San Antonio is the taco. We eat them for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Tacos can be found in mobile food trucks, hole-in-the-walls, lobbies of where we work and high class restaurants.

But to paraphrase the Bard, would a taco by any other name taste as sweet?

Recently there was a discussion at my workplace about the difference between a taco and a burrito. This launched a huge discussion between the nuances of each item.

I have experienced this conundrum firsthand. Growing up on the South Plains, I always referred to the breakfast meal of eggs, bacon and cheese in a tortilla as a “breakfast burrito.” Coming to San Antonio, many of my coworkers kept asking me if I would like a bean and egg “breakfast taco.” I kept declining because I could not understand why anyone would want a crispy taco shell with beans and eggs first thing in the morning.

It was several months before I realized that breakfast tacos in San Antonio did not come in a crispy shell but rather a soft tortilla. Once I became enlightened to this fact, I have happily ordered breakfast tacos ever since.

This led me to develop what I refer to as the I-20 Taco Theory. Interstate 20 more or less cuts Texas right in the middle as the road travels East to West passing through DFW and Midland before swooping down South to El Paso. People who live either side of this line have drastically different views on tacos…