Taco House

San Antonio is a good breakfast city, and Taco House is a shining example of why. More than a dozen different breakfast tacos are available, from bacon and egg to carne guisada (gravy-sopped beef) and lengua (tongue). Griddle-warm flour tortillas make a big difference, delivering even the most plebeian filling with high honors. And by the way, Taco House’s plebeian fillings are far from drab. Eggs are buttery; bacon is thick and smoky; nuggets of potato are cooked to a perfect point of inside creaminess and outside crunch.

I went for chorizo and egg, which, per local custom, is not eggs with a side order of chorizo sausage but rather eggs scrambled with ground up sausage to become an entirely new and different food: juicy, spicy and butter-rich. It’s great on a plate with refried beans and potatoes or as the filling of a taco.