The Best Breakfast Tacos in Austin

Reyna and Maritza Vazquez bought a tiny trailer on East Cesar Chavez in 2008 to sell snow cones, and the migas that followed became the city's reference point. Skip the default this once for the Migas Poblanas Taco — egg and tortilla chips with poblano, black beans, queso fresco and avocado — the sleeper on their own menu. Everything below gets measured against this operation.

The Avila family has run this East Seventh bakery and diner since 1962, and breakfast never stops before the doors close. Order the Migas Con Todo Taco, two scrambled eggs with corn chips, onions, tomatoes and jalapenos topped with cheese, on a tortilla made in back. Grab a pan dulce from the case on the way out; the bakery half is not decoration.

Handmade tortillas pressed off the shop's own tortillero are the argument here, and at breakfast they carry the Chorizo Deluxe — house chorizo and egg folded in while the tortilla still steams. The Cobos brothers started from a modified paleta push-cart in 2016 and moved through a Hyde Park truck before the brick and mortar. Get there before the morning queue does.

Since 1989 a counter on Dessau Road has sold subs, burgers and the breakfast tacos The Infatuation now ranks first in the whole city. Migas is the order, griddled from six in the morning on weekdays and served all day. The build-your-own board runs from no meat to three meats, but trust the named tacos: carne guisada and barbacoa hold the back half of the menu. Closed Sundays.

Two schoolteachers, Juan and Myrna Meza, opened their East Cesar Chavez dining room in 1980. The Don Juan El Taco Grande is the point: a mound of egg, potato, bacon and cheese no single tortilla can close around, so extras come on the side for rebuilding. Seven in the morning until three in the afternoon, seven days, and the line says everything.

Aurelio and Rosa Torres opened a ten-seat taco shop on Manor Road in 1990 and grew it into a full restaurant without losing the morning trade. The Number 9 is the one to say at the counter: house-made machacado, eggs and pico, with the Austin Chronicle's best-breakfast-taco nod on the wall to back it up. Closed Mondays, so plan the craving.

Carmen and Moses Vasquez fed downtown from a tiny kitchen window on Congress Avenue starting in 1958; their family opened this East Sixth revival in 2012, two weeks after deciding not to lease the building to strangers. Mom's Migas leads the menu next to Mexi-Iced Coffee and Texas-sized tamales, and the migas are what the lineage tastes like.

Rudy Cisco Cisneros opened his East Sixth bakery in 1950 and fed half of Texas politics, Lyndon Johnson included; grandson Matt Cisneros runs it now with two partners. Migas are the order and always have been — the family's golf-course outpost bills Rudy as the man who brought migas to Muny. Get the biscuits too; the bakery came first.

May 2004 is when the Perez family parked the truck at 2101 South First, years after Jose Luis first hung the family name over a Dobie Mall food stall; the roots run to a meat market in Michoacan. Breakfast builds from a short list, and the Migas, Ham, Egg and Cheese Taco is the combination regulars defend — chips still crisp under the ham.

Five locations now trade under the name Nestor and Margarita started in 2010, and the breakfast board stays the same disciplined half-dozen at each: the Migas stacks egg, crispy chips, tomatoes, onions and jalapenos under cheese, listed beside the bacon-and-avocado Don Chago. Mornings are the quiet way into a truck the lunch crowd found years ago.

Cartel violence pushed Tyson and Cherry out of a successful Monterrey restaurant; the Airport Boulevard shop they built leans hard into Austin instead of recreating home. The King George is the argument — migas, fried avocado, bacon and creamy Sriracha in one taco that has no business holding together. Every taco on the board gets a name, Princess Leia to Matador.

North Austin keeps this one close: a Powell Lane original with a second shop on Harrisglenn Drive, and a top-tier spot in The Infatuation's twenty-entry Austin breakfast-taco guide to show for it. The migas taco is what the guide flags first, with steak and eggs as the reason to come back. Built to order, counter plain, no theater.