BREAD & BREAKFAST
ADDRESS: 5600 Vineland Avenue, North Hollywood, CA 91601
WEBSITE: https://breadandbreakfastla.com/
During a conversation at work one day, my friend Zach was mentioning about a breakfast burrito place that he and his girlfriend went to down in North Hollywood called Bread & Breakfast. He said that the burritos there were pretty solid, giving you a good amount of food. Fast forward a couple of months and I found myself down in the Burbank area finishing an errand one morning, looking for breakfast. I pulled up Google Maps and saw that Bread & Breakfast was only a 10 minute drive from where I was, so that made it an easy decision to head over and check it out.
The place was just like how Zach described it to me: a bunch of tables set up on the backside of a Circus Liquor store at a street corner. The parking lot itself for the liquor store was already pretty small, so once this place really started to see a breakfast or lunch crowd rush, you definitely needed to get lucky with the parking, or else you might need to find someplace down the street. I got there right before the crowd and managed to get a space in front of the store, but the amount of people easily tripled in the time that I was there.
Burritos, bowls, sandwiches, or tacos were the primary styles that you could choose from. All options focused with a standard accompaniment of hashbrowns, eggs, and cheese, and some of the options would add other items like tomatoes or avocado. From a meats perspective, there were some Armenian style options, such as basturma (highly seasoned air-dried cured beef) and the halal spiced beef, or more traditional like bacon or carne asada.
I was rather torn between the BBB (basturma, tomatoes, eggs, hashbrowns, and cheese) or the Soujouk (spiced beef, tomatoes, eggs, hashbrowns, and cheese), and it really came down to which meat choice sounded better. Because Zach had mentioned to me specifically about their burritos, that was the style I would go with. At the end of the day, I decided to go with the Soujouk, without the cheese and adding avocado to it.
It was definitely quite a setup that they had going on for this whole operation. I counted four flat-top grills constantly populated with either meats, eggs, hashbrowns, or vegetables, along with quite a few long folding tables for food prep or assembly. Seems like these guys have been around for quite a while, with plenty of customers rolling through during the time I was waiting for my food, along with one of their banners saying they were featured in a “Best Of” in the LA Times back in 2021.
About 20 minutes went by before I got my food; I attributed that more to the larger groups that had ordered ahead of me, but that was still quite a bit of time, given that a majority of these ingredients might already be pre-cooked. This was definitely a take-out spot only, with absolutely no seating whatsoever anywhere. I saw some people sit down right on the curb and start eating, while others were eating out of the back of their SUVs in the parking lot. I ended up hopping in my car to start digging into the burrito.
This burrito was definitely a hefty amount of food, there was no question about that. It was nice that the burrito was cut in half to make it easier to enjoy in more manageable portions as well. The cross-section view showed an array of the potatoes, eggs, and avocado, but it was a bit harder to discern the tomatoes and spiced beef. When I took a bite out of the burrito, the ingredients I was able to taste matched what I was seeing visually. The flavors were predominantly potatoes, then followed up with the avocado. Eggs were next, but I don’t really remember getting much of the Armenian spiced beef at all.
I will say that the things that helped add the most flavor to the burrito, however, were the cilantro crema and the house salsa verde. They were the perfect complement to the burrito to add a different punch of flavor to the mix, along with a moisture component to help tie together each bite. The salsa verde definitely packed quite a bit of heat as well, so I really had to make sure not to pour too much on at once.
The breakfast burrito was filling, there was no doubt about that. But the slightly disappointing part was about how the burrito was mostly potatoes, and I didn’t really get much of the meat at all. Is it something that I would go out of my way to pick up again? I wouldn’t say so, but if others wanted to take a stop by to get some breakfast, I wouldn’t be opposed to it. If you’re looking for a burrito that will keep you full for two solid meals (or you can split into two meals), the portions at Bread & Breakfast will certainly check the box in that regard.
Let’s now take a look at the Bread & Breakfast Dish Spotlight. Asterisks (*) below mark my recommended dishes.
** Soujouk Burrito **
Halal Armenian spiced beef, tomatoes, eggs, and hashbrowns. (Pictured with no cheese and added avocado.)
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And finally, here are my rankings for Bread & Breakfast:
Food: 4 / 5
There’s a good selection of different breakfast options, along with the different styles that you could get them in. Portion-wise, there is definitely a lot of food, no doubt about that. But the ratio of the potatoes to the other ingredients in my breakfast burrito left me slightly disappointed.
Atmosphere: N/A
Given that this food stand is located on the backside of a liquor store with no seating, it’d be tough to assign a ranking for this category.
Service: 4 / 5
20 minutes for one breakfast burrito does seem like quite a bit of time, especially if they already have a lot of these ingredients pre-cooked and ready to go.
Price: 4.25 / 5
My Soujouk burrito with the added avocado came out to be $16, which is a bit on the high side for a breakfast burrito. For the value, I only wished there had been more spiced beef within the burrito to balance out with the potatoes.
Overall:
12.25 / 15
(82%)
Categories: California, Restaurants
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