5 spots for great huevos rancheros

These restaurants go beyond basics

Note: The Express-News is suspending traditional restaurant reviews until restaurant dining rooms fully reopen.

The essential Mexican breakfast we know as huevos rancheros starts with the simplicity of eggs and salsa. Where it goes from there makes all the difference.

Meet five places in and around San Antonio doing huevos rancheros with style: Birotes Restaurant & Bakery, Comal County Tacos, Comfort Cafe, Mendez Cafe and Tia’s Taco Hut.

Birotes Restaurant & Bakery

Breakfast is the main attraction at this Universal City extension of the Birotes Tortas Ahogadas family. The bakery cases are full of conchas, little gingerbread marranitos piggies and coconutcovered yo-yos as big as shaggy red softballs, and breakfast tacos are just 99 cents until 10 a.m. on the weekdays.

But the star player is a terra cotta plate of huevos rancheros ($7.99) stocked with sunny side up eggs, warm salsa roja, handmade flour tortillas, breakfast potatoes and refried beans. I expected all that. What I didn’t expect was barbacoa on the side, a lush chop of roasted beef cheek to absorb and amplify everything around it.

110 W. Lindbergh Blvd., Universal City, 210-908-9946, Facebook: @BirotesRestaurant. Dine-in and curbside available.

Comal County Tacos

At this little orange roadside cafe, what you see is what you get, because everything’s laid out in simmering steampans at the front counter. Brisket guisado, carne guisada, chilaquiles, all ready for breakfast tacos on flour tortillas the staff is patting out and laying on the grill just a few feet away.

One of those pans is filled with papas rancheras decked out with onions, tomatoes and peppers, and their deep-simmered flavor is the turbocharger for a plate of huevos rancheros fortified with beans, bacon and two of those hot, fresh flour tortillas ($7.99).

15405 Texas 46, Spring Branch,

830-228-5202, no web presence. Dine-in and takeout available.

Comfort Cafe

The rambling building set just below street level off Bandera Road near Loop 410 practically pulses with energy, radiating an aura of positivity fed by the cafe’s nonprofit mission to help people overcome addiction. With LPs and eight-track tapes on the wall, a coffeehouse in the back and a booming American Indian drum up front to celebrate donations, Comfort Cafe feels like a bohemian diner in a college town. Which it is, and more.

The menu glides up and down the diner spectrum of burgers, Benedicts, big salads and the fattest, fluffiest pancakes I’ve seen in San Antonio so far. But

it’s just as comfortable with huevos rancheros, taking them a step further by cooking the salsa right along with potatoes, onions and peppers to create a kind of Tex-Mex casserole foundation for sunny side-up eggs. There are no prices on the menu.

You pay what you can. I’d start at $10 and let the love take it from there.

5616 Bandera Road, 512-5750348, Facebook: @5616BanderaRd. Dine-in and curbside available.

Mendez Cafe

I already knew Mendez Cafe on the Southwest Side for having some of the best breakfast tacos of the whole 365 Days of Tacos series. That same energy — along with flour tortillas that took top prize in our Critic’s Choice

awards — goes into huevos rancheros.

The usual suspects are here: fried eggs with golden yolks, thick tomato salsa, fried potatoes, beans. But Mendez does that thing I love about Mexican cafes: They let me add a grilled bone-in pork chop. It’s a $6.99 lumberjack breakfast for city boys like me.

201 Bartholomew Ave., 210-9236603, Facebook: Mendez Cafe. Dine-in, curbside and third-party delivery available.

Tia’s Taco Hut

Is it just me, or do you rate a huevos rancheros plate by how many breakfast tacos you can make from it once the eggs are gone? If you do, too, then Tia’s is for both of us, because their huevos rancheros plate comes

with the option of papas con chorizo in place of regular potatoes. Pile that into fresh flour tortillas with beans and what’s left of that chunky, smoky salsa, and an already solid value at $5.99 becomes breakfast with a bonus.

Speaking of bonuses: The locally owned chain just rolled out its Chase Hill location near La Cantera in November, but a fifth Tia’s is coming any day now at 7214 Blanco Road just outside Loop 410.

15606 Chase Hill Blvd., 210-5415170, more locations at tiastacohuttx. Dine-in and curbside available.

Photos by Mike Sutter / Staff A huevos rancheros plate comes with machacado and handmade flour tortillas at Birotes Restaurant & Bakery in Universal City.

At Mendez Cafe on the Southwest Side, a grilled pork chop is an option with the huevos rancheros.

At Tia’s Taco Hut on Chase Hill Boulevard, huevos rancheros can be ordered with papas and chorizo.

Huevos rancheros at Comal County Tacos are served with bacon, papas a la mexicana and handmade flour tortillas.

Salsa is cooked into the potatoes for huevos rancheros at Comfort Cafe on Bandera Road.