LUCKY BOY
ADDRESS: 531 E Walnut Street, Pasadena, CA 91101
WEBSITE: http://luckyboyburgers.com/
Chalk up finding another spot thanks to TikTok. Somehow, a video of a guy rating the best breakfast burritos in the LA area showed up on my feed, and that’s how Lucky Boy came onto my radar. Given how accessible of a location it was, I added it to my Google Maps and saved it for later. As luck would have it, my friend Nate and I were in search of a place to get breakfast down in the Pasadena area, so we decided to check out these breakfast burritos for ourselves.
Based on the sign out front, Lucky Boy has been around since 1961, and I’m sure that there’s been some history over the past 60 years. The interior did feel a bit dated and some of the sports memorabilia that hung on the walls of the restaurant looked a bit faded. But at the end of the day, at a place like this, I feel like it’s the quality of the food that counts. The dining area would just be more functional to eat your food and be on your way.
From strictly a breakfast burrito standpoint, there are four primary options. All of them come with a base of hash browns, scrambled eggs, and cheddar cheese. The meat portion is what would vary between them, with a selection of bacon, ham, spicy sausage, carne asada, or avocado for your veggie option. It was a toss-up for me between the spicy sausage and carne asada, but the spicy sausage won out for me in the end. To take it up one level, I also decided to add avocado into my burrito as well.
The dining area consisted of a bunch of booths and a couple of tables, all looking like they were showing their age. From what I could tell looking into the kitchen, the staff working the flat-top had a pretty huge pile of hash browns that were on standby at the back of the grill, probably anticipating the rush of people coming in for the breakfast burritos. It certainly didn’t take us long before our numbers were called, and we found one of the empty booths to go and start unwrapping our food.
With just a single burrito in a brown paper bag, you could legitimately probably knock someone out with it. The burrito itself probably weighed what felt like almost one pound and was absolutely massive. Just to help make it more manageable to eat, I decided to cut it in half, where you could see the burrito absolutely stuffed to the brim with eggs, hash browns, spicy sausage, and avocado. I’ve seen the staff at Chipotle try to roll those massive-sized burritos, with varying degrees of success. I can imagine that the staff at Lucky Boy have gotten it down to an art after a lot of practice.
Each burrito order comes with some small containers of salsa, and that was the perfect complement to pour on top before each bite. The salsa gave a slight kick to each bite along with adding some moisture to balance out with the dry ingredients of the potatoes, eggs, and sausage. The avocado is not usually part of the combination, so it was an extra add-in. But the smoothness that it helped to provide was definitely worth it. Even with the sheer number of ingredients that were packed into the burrito, I thought the distribution overall was pretty good with each bite.
If you are looking for a breakfast burrito that will leave you full for more than just breakfast, this is absolutely it. My breakfast burrito ended up tiding me over for almost seven hours total, and I only just started to get hungry right around dinner. Although the restaurant itself is not going to dazzle you with the sit-down accommodations, this is one of those instances where the food does the talking. After all, there’s a reason that the restaurant has been around for over 61 years.
Let’s now take a look at the Lucky Boy Restaurant Dish Spotlight. Asterisks (*) below mark my recommended dishes.
** Spicy Breakfast Burrito **
Eggs, hash browns, spicy sausage slices, wrapped in a flour tortilla. Pictured with added avocado and no cheddar cheese.
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And finally, here are my rankings for Lucky Boy:
Food: 4.5 / 5
Just purely from a breakfast burrito standpoint, the various meat options meant that you could either change it up on subsequent visits or stick with your go-to. The burrito itself was substantial, and the salsa mixed in with the rest of the breakfast ingredients made for a great combination.
Atmosphere: 4 / 5
It’s a pretty no-frills dining area, which looks like it hadn’t been updated in quite some time. But it was certainly functional and got the job done.
Service: 4.25 / 5
We got there and there was only a couple of people ahead of us. But after we got there, the rush started, and there was a pretty consistent five to six people always in line. Despite this, the cooks were continuing to crank the food out, so we weren’t waiting long.
Price: 4.75 / 5
Even though the breakfast burrito weighed in at $13, what you got for that was pretty hefty. I’d say that the value was certainly there, as the food was more than enough to last me for two meals.
Overall:
17.5 / 20
(88%)
Categories: California, Restaurants
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