Breakfast Burritos Have Been Around Forever, But When Did They Become Popular?

For residents of the Southwest, a breakfast burrito is one of the great morning pleasures. A medley of Mexican and American tastes, it's an easy-to-love combination of a wheat tortilla rolled around scrambled eggs, cheese (often cheddar), and a meat like bacon or chorizo, all drowned in salsa and peppers. Equal parts spicy, comforting and filling, it's a dish so classic, it's hard to imagine New Mexican cuisine prior.

Yet in this form, the food's roots are surprisingly modern, with most crediting Santa Fe institution Tia Sophia's with lending its name in the 1970s. From then on, it has remained a restaurant staple, and is still served at the same location. Plus, it's spread to states like Texas, Arizona, California, and Colorado, where it's found with unique regional variations. The ultimate breakfast recipe can involve a great number of ingredients; in that lies its magic. As a result, the breakfast burrito's perennial popularity comes as no surprise.

While Tia Sophia's was the first eatery to sell the food under the breakfast burrito name, they weren't the ones to invent it. Before appearing on restaurant menus, New Mexico residents already enjoyed the dish for many years prior, craftily wrapping ingredients of their choosing in a tortilla. In fact, some even trace the food to when the region was a Spanish colony, with an accompanying name of tortillas de desayuno. Legends cite that vaqueros wrapped different ham varieties and eggs in tortillas — plausible, since such dishes appear in Northern Mexican states, too.

For many years, the breakfast burrito carried on as a commonplace food, crafted by many with kitchen staples. Intermixing varying influences — local New Mexican hatch peppers, America's beloved bacon, and Mexican culinary techniques– it's a showcase of the region's multiculturality. Plus, with an ability to make breakfast burritos ahead, it's a food with layers of niftiness. Yet, only once it hit the menus at Sante Fe restaurants did the delectable combo appeal to diners on a broader scale. No surprise that it remains a celebrated part of New Mexican cuisine, present at noted events like the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta since the 1970s. A delicious example of how not all Mexican-American food is Tex-Mex.