El Azteca - San Diego, CA

I have been doing a lot of traveling up and down California seeking the best of the best in burritos which leaves me with a ton of great content I will be supplying over the next few weeks.

Recently, my travels brought me to sunny San Diego in hopes the proximity to the border would lend itself to quality Mexican food aplenty. A bit of research and luck later brought me to El Azteca in La Mesa.

Unassuming hole in the strip mall that it is seemingly promises nothing new, but D and I pushed through and ordered THE breakfast burrito.

A trend in SD I began noticing was a lack of options. I have grown accustomed to ordering a burrito while specifying the meat, but on more than just a few occasions the burrito on offer was the only one of its kind. An approach I prefer because I know I am being served what they are confident in making, and it eliminates the extraneous costs of keeping a multitude of meats on the ready.

What arrived was simple enough: potatoes, scrambled eggs, melted cheese, and cubed ham accompanied by a red bottle of house hot sauce, but after one bite everything had changed. This simple arrangement of perfectly prepared breakfast staples lifts above the fray staring down with judgement on all lesser breakfast abominations. What magic is this? Why is this so tongue-numbingly good?

First, the ham takes you by surprise. Not many places opt for the ham as the go to breakfast burrito meat filler, and if they do, too often it is the stuff of bargain basement deli counters. This is different. Sweet and salty play against the full-bodied potatoes. The cheesy scramble spreads evenly throughout leaving nothing untouched by the mainline injection of hell yeah, so every bite left me proclaiming the possibility of a heaven and pondering the burrito I may find there.

I was halfway through before it occurred to me to touch the salsa bottle, but I'm glad I did. A comforting heat rose up through sweet tang of the red, and I began to squeeze it over every bite.

One burrito alone made the trip worth it, but, luckily for me, there were so many more magical experiences I can't wait to share. Some of the best burritos I have ever had. Until then enjoy a sexy close up.

Delimart - Bakersfield, CA

If you ask most any oilfield worker, shop hand, or truck driver in the Rosedale area where to get the best breakfast burrito, the majority will steer you towards a convenience store on the corner of Rosedale Hwy and Fruitvale Ave, and the majority would be lying.

Delimart serves up all the typical diner foods, but the breakfast crowd comes for one of two things: the biscuits and gravy or the humongous breakfast burritos.

I'm a large dude with a good appetite, and finishing one half of the petite burrito at Delimart is a monumental task. Any sane person ordering the regular sized BB solely for themselves needs to be reevaluated.

Scrambled eggs, hash browns, and cheddar cheese make up the base to which ham, bacon, sausage, or the combo, consisting of all three, can be added. My own spin is The Big Bad Wolf doing the burrito combo style and adding gravy inside to blow the three little pigs down.

The misconception with Delimart's BB is that biggest translates to best. I prefer a smaller more concentrated effort in my burritos with the focus being on flavor and consistency. When burritos begin to take on the weight, cost, and dimensions of a brick, I tend to lose interest. One has to question the quality of a $5 dollar burrito that weighs upwards of 2 pounds.

I pleaded with the cashier to cook down the hash browns until they are well done, but he told me the potatoes, eggs, and cheese are all in a mix and preparing them any other way would be impossible. Thus, I received hash whites and a bunch of meat flotsam on this final voyage to Delimart for breakfast.

There is no body to this burrito. Everything chews like paste providing zero depth or separation of flavor. The gravy is of the bland white variety, but does a good job melting down the bag cheese. There's Tapatio and Pace salsa cups on offer, but nothing really helps wash away the whiteness.

There are better options on Rosedale highway for a BB fix like here or here, so don't waste your time with this one.