I found breakfast burrito bliss at a Home Depot

Kelly’s Deli in Emeryville serves up one of the best in the Bay Area

I have a weird relationship with Home Depot. My dad’s a contractor, and like most immigrantowned businesses, that meant I had to go to work with him. In those times when I cosplayed as a teenage Bob the Builder, sometimes we would go to Home Depot multiple times a day.

I dreaded going. At that age I was more concerned with video games and comics, none of which I ever found there. I wonder if he knew that hardware stores are no place for kids.

But lately, I’ve been going to my dad’s favorite store a lot more. Not for a sheet of plywood or a buzz saw, but for a breakfast burrito.

Tasked with updating fellow restaurant critic Soleil Ho’s top burrito list, I came across a post on Reddit that claimed a Home Depot cafe named Kelly’s Deli in Emeryville made a great breakfast burrito. I had to try it for myself because the internet has a tendency to exaggerate, myself included.

It turns out, some things you read online are true.

The breakfast burrito at Kelly’s Deli really nails what I love about the dish, in all its casual glory. Growing up in L.A., I saw breakfast burritos everywhere: They’re a staple at local burger joints, whose menus often include options, like pastrami or club sandwiches, outside the typical burger fare.

In the Bay Area, there are plenty of good ones. Breakfast Little makes one with crisp tater tots and a fruity habanero salsa. In Oakland, Otaez’s machaca burrito takes me into the sublime, with its rich stringy meat and spiced beans. On Sundays at the Outer Sunset Farmers Market & Mercantile, Semilla’s take made with handmade flour tortillas filled with saucy nopales folded into soft scrambled eggs, makes me want to write a poem about its magnificence.

But it can be hard to casually stumble on a good breakfast burrito. And simplicity and serendipity are what a breakfast burrito is all about.

While there are many takes on breakfast burritos — some use a toasted tortilla, others focus on textures like extra-crisp bacon or tater tots — for me, it’s all about even distribution of flavors and ingredients. The one from Kelly’s Deli ($10) effortlessly presents that balance. Inside a leopard-spotted flour tortilla is a scramble of eggs, hash browns, cheese and hickory-flavored bacon.

All the components of the filling blend together, creating a smoky, starchy and cheesy portable breakfast parcel. The tangy, faintly bitter and spicy salsa bolsters the smoke and acts like the final, shiny coat of paint.

During the breakfast rush, the scene at Kelly’s Deli is buzzing. A small line forms

of dudes in tattered, paintcovered pants. Another has a 2-by-4 slung over his shoulder that extends several feet above his head. Onlookers leaving the store do double takes when they see the line. These images are oddly comforting; they transport me back to those days when I worked with my dad. He would promise me food after work as an incentive, which always worked.

In those men standing in line for breakfast burritos, I see him, even though we’re over 300 miles away from each other, and remember all the time we spent roaming the orange-colored aisles together. I might never be a true fan of the hardware store, but now I have two good reasons to go — for breakfast burritos, and for my dad.

Photos by Brontë Wittpenn/The Chronicle A line forms at Kelly’s Deli at Home Depot in Emeryville (above) where the breakfast burrito (top and left) is a scramble of eggs, hash browns, cheese and hickory-flavored bacon in a toasted flour tortilla.