Something odd about what is no doubt the most popular single breakfast in Los Angeles is that the more you pay for it, the lousier it gets. This is counter intuitive but I am afraid all too true. What I’m talking about is my favorite start to the day, a platter of Huevos Rancheros. The further up the food chain, the worse this hearty soul satisfying meal becomes.
In case you are new to the West Coast, Huevos Ranchero is the traditional breakfast in northern Mexico. In English it would be Ranch Style Eggs. I first experienced this wonderful meal on Spring Break in the sixties. After driving through the night on our way to Mazatlan in the middle of the Sonora Desert we stopped at a rustic Pemex gas station that was also a tienda y cantina to fill up and eat. The place was all by itself in the wildest wilderness, a long building with walls of rust colored stone and a corrugated metal roof and a shady verandah across the front. Inside the far end was a bar and dinning room with simple homemade tables and a mix of chairs and benches painted in bright colors.
Our unofficial guide and classmate, a Mexican Irishman from Mexico City told us to have the huevos rancheros. We went along and fifteen minutes later the daughter of the cook served us each a platter of refritos with two perfectly fried sunny side up eggs on a crispy corn tortilla under a ladle of warm ranchero sauce, neither mild nor hot. We also got a pile of hot home made corn tortillas. Wow, it was a great breakfast, a huge load of protein that we ate with cups of smooth rich cafe olla, literally “rotten coffee” which is strong Mexican grown coffee sweetened with raw brown sugar and cinnamon. Great stuff. For some reason Mexican coffee while aromatic has less bitterness than our coffee. We didn’t talk much and made short work of the food. We were hungry and every platter was wiped clean with the hot tortillas.
Back here in LA, something that drives crazy is that this classic dish suffers terribly as the level of the joint selling it moves up the market. You can pay fifteen bucks for huevos rancheros at a hotel dinning room and get parody of the traditional meal. For starters, the refried pinto bears are replaced with underdone black beans. Then the tortilla is factory made from white wheat flour and as appealing as a cold buttermilk pancake. Two poached eggs rest on this limp pasty starch and they are covered with a warm overly tomato and far too spicy sauce. Ugh! Apparently our foodies are in love with black beans, even though they are as rare in northern Mexico as corn bread and grits are in Minnesota.
In diners and coffee shops the management often tampers with this dish on the mistaken assumption that their customers don’t want it to be too Mexican. Here you pay eight to ten bucks for a toned down huevos de gavachos. Awful stuff. (Gavacho is what Mexicans call us, gringo is what we think they call us.)
As I said, the cheaper the place the better the huevos rancheros. Right now my favorite place for this world class breakfast is a hamburger joint in Glendale. For five bucks they give me what I want and expect, a very close replica of variorum meal I ate in the middle of the Sonora Desert almost fifty years ago. When they call my number, they present me with a platter covered with an inch of real pinto bean refritos with shreds of queso ranchero melted into them, at one end on a corn tortilla are three sunny side up eggs covered in a warm medium salsa ranchero. Tightly rapped in aluminum foil are four small warm corn tortillas. This is it, the real thing. When you finish the last tortilla and wipe up the last smear of egg york and ranchero sauce, you feel ready and willing to take on the world, ready to mount your horse and head for the north end of the rancho.
The lesson here is that with huevos ranchero, do it right or not at all. The dish is simplicity itself and that is what makes it great. It’s like going into a little place in Japan and getting a perfect bowl of steamed rice topped with a grilled fresh mackerel lightly sauced with teriyaki sauce. A perfect combination of clean pure flavors.
The place I mention is Burger Central on Central Avenue in Glendale half way between the Galleria and the 134 Freeway. They also make a very good flame broiled quarter pound hamburger and serve it with regular or steak fries. It is almost as good as the one at Oinkster. Another place that make real huevos rancheros is Doña Rosa at Arroyo Seco & California in Pasadena. I can also add that almost any little place in the Barrio makes real huevos rancheros for a fair price, and they might even serve it with home made corn tortillas too.
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