Mexican Breakfast and Brunch Dishes: What to Order and What It Means

In Mexico today, almuerzo means a very filling breakfast eaten between about 10 and noon, one that lets you skip the midday meal, according to Larousse Cocina. If you were up at dawn and only had coffee or atole and bread, you eat almuerzo later, before lunch at two or after. That makes it close to brunch in everything but the mimosas.

All those eggs, explained

Start with rancheros, because the others are variations on it. Two fried eggs go on a corn tortilla that's had a quick pass through hot oil, and red salsa goes over the top. They're especially popular in Mexico City and central Mexico. On the Gulf and in the south, they come with fried plantain. Divorciados, a Mexico City cafeteria standard, split the two eggs with different salsas, red and green, often kept apart by a spoonful of refried beans. It's the answer to anyone who can't pick.

Motuleños are from the town of Motul in Yucatán and take the idea further with ham, peas and cheese. A la mexicana is scrambled with tomato, onion and green chile, and the name comes from those colors: they match the flag. With chorizo, the chorizo goes in the pan first and colors the eggs.

The north does it differently

Machaca is the dish to know. It's beef salted, dried in the sun and pounded with a stone or a mallet, an old way of keeping meat that Larousse says some authors date to the 18th century. Scrambled with eggs, on flour tortillas, with beans and coffee, it's breakfast across northern Mexico, and it's the form most of the rest of the country knows. People in Sonora and Sinaloa often pound their own at home.

Tortillas in sauce

Chilaquiles are fried tortilla pieces soaked in salsa, and there's enough to say about them that we wrote a whole guide. Even the name is disputed: Larousse gives three possible Nahuatl roots. Enfrijoladas use the same logic with a thick bean sauce instead of salsa. It's a quiet, filling plate.

Where do breakfast tacos fit?

Mostly in Texas. A breakfast taco, a soft corn or flour tortilla with eggs, meat or cheese, is usually filed under Tex-Mex. Austin likes to claim it. Gustavo Arellano's answer is that San Antonio never had to brag about it, because people there just call it breakfast. Mexico has its own morning tacos, too. Larousse says fish tacos in Baja California are popular for breakfast, and tacos de cabeza are eaten in the morning in Mexico City.

What do you drink?

Café de olla

Ground coffee boiled with cinnamon and piloncillo, traditionally in a clay pot.

Atole

A thick, hot drink of cooked ground corn. It takes the name of what flavors it: guava, pineapple, cinnamon.

Champurrado

Atole with chocolate and piloncillo. The classic partner to tamales.

And on the side, pan dulce, sweet bread. The most common is the concha, a soft round bun with a sugar crust scored like a seashell. A split bolillo roll with beans and cheese is a mollete, which Mexico City cafeterias serve for breakfast or a light supper.

Are bottomless mimosas Mexican?

No, and neither is a Benedict. Bottomless brunch is an American restaurant habit. We do it anyway, because this is New York, and a lot of our brunch isn't traditional. The Red Velvet Chicken & Waffles has a Froot Loops waffle, if you need proof. Our Wellington Benedict has chipotle hollandaise, so it sits somewhere in the middle.

What's Mexican on our brunch menu

How it runs: Saturday & Sunday, 12pm – 4pm. Bottomless mimosas & sangrias, $25 per person, with a live DJ.

The Mexican breakfast plates we have on now:

It runs with a live DJ, so it's more of a party than a quiet plate of eggs. See how brunch works or, if you're not drinking, our zero-proof brunch guide.