Back when I was a confused 20-something, I worked as an archeologist for what was then called the Laboratory of
Anthropology in Santa Fe, NM. We occupied the old St. Vincent's hospital building east of the cathedral and
plaza, and each morning a small, elderly Hispanic man would come around with a little cooler filled with $3.00
burritos. I tried not to indulge in these things too much, partly for cost control and partly because they were so
special to me that I thought if I ate one every day they would lose their luster. My strategy must have worked
because breakfast burritos have only grown on me, and if you ask me my favorite food, I will say, hands down, the
proper kind of breakfast burrito.
"Proper" for me requires a lot of melted cheese with appropriate portions of egg, sausage, green chili, and hash
browns. The single biggest cheat ? and I know they do this because it's cheap ? is to stuff a tortilla full of 80
percent potatoes and call it breakfast. No sir. Nuh-uh. Few things piss me off more than a wad full of hash browns
passing for a bonafide burrito. And sadly, this has occurred all too often.
You could argue, I guess, that it makes grabbing a breakfast burrito a bit of an adventure. Their popularity has only
grown, flowering out of New Mexico and into the greater southwest so that no self-respecting Four Corners coffee
joint can afford to go without a selection. But that doesn't mean everyone knows how to make one. That Hispanic man
in Santa Fe probably had legions and centuries of little old madres y tias y hermanas and (who knows?) tios who liked
to cook and knew how to put on wedding parties for 300 behind his small but delicious cache of food. That doesn't
mean white honkey café owners in chi-chi places such as Durango and Telluride and Flagstaff have a clue, though some
have gotten one.
There is an admirable assortment at a homemade doughnut place in my town, for example. You can get veggie, all meat
(three kinds!), various versions of meat, carne adovada (yum!) etcera and so forth. They are good, affordable, and do
not partake of the cardinal sin of Too Many Hash Browns. But there are others who do not meet this criteria, and
I've had to learn the hard way, by forking over 6 bucks or so (the price has roughly doubled since the 1980s)
for such a beast. It's even worse when the hash browns appear steamed rather than fried crunchy. What is that? Low
fat burrito-dom? My God. Low fat is NOT what you're going for when you make the decision to indulge here.
Dear Reader, log on and add your two cents for the best breakfast burrito in the Four Corners. The homely burrito,
along with its distant cousin, the Navajo taco, are two primary reasons to never leave our gorgeous area. Others, of
course, include the smell of green chili roasting come late summer, and the gorgeous scenery. But those are other
stories. For now, forage high and wide for the Best. And let me know what you come up with.
As A Woman
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