A guide to Colima’s breakfast burritos

Some Saturday mornings, you can tell what kind of Friday night was had in in the city by the lengthy drive-thru line at Colima's Mexican Food. In North Park, that can mean a line of cars backed out onto University Avenue. The lure? San Diego’s favorite hangover food: the breakfast burrito.

They’re immensely popular. The longtime Mexican restaurant offers a comprehensive menu ranging from enchiladas to quesadillas, but on weekend mornings, Colima’s kitchen operates like a factory line: eggs and flour tortillas go in, breakfast burritos come out.

For those housebound by viral fears, or too morning-after debilitated to stomach the drive-thru, delivery services pick up the slack. Colima’s covid-cleared dining room becomes a momentary hangout for a rotating crew of delivery drivers — I didn’t even realize they work in the morning.

Colima’s doesn’t provide a single type of breakfast burrito, but a scrambled egg and cheese variety. The basic $5.99 burritos include a single addition, whether bacon, ham, sausage, chorizo, potato, or a la Mexicana, which includes pico de gallo. For $6.49, you can go for steak and bacon. These are good sized burritos, and they will get the job done.

But better are the $6.99 burritos, which include the options machaca, steak and potato, and Azteca, which per usual refers to nopal cactus and carne asada. Less self-explanatory are the grande, almuerzo, and hash brown burritos.

In breakfast burrito lore, debates continue over whether potatoes should be a part of a breakfast burrito, and the steak and potato burrito here suggests the answer is yes. Perhaps more contentious is whether they should include beans. The almuerzo burrito satisfies the beans crowd, along with sour cream and pico de gallo. The grande is for those who want it all: beans and potatoes, plus a protein (bacon by default).

My choice is the hash brown breakfast burrito. Rather than sautéed chunk potatoes, hash browns are added to the egg and cheese combo, along with sour cream and sausage. It was no hardship trying to figure out what Colima’s different breakfast burrito names represented, but the crunchy potatoes here speak to me.

That said, I’ve heard rumors you can request your grande burrito be made with hash browns. Something to ponder my next wait in the drive-thru line.