Meet the woman who's tried nearly 40 breakfast burritos to find the best in LA
Casey Shea wanted to find the best breakfast burrito in Los Angeles, so she started asking friends for their recommendations.
Shea decided to document her findings on a spreadsheet , along with a rating of 1 to 5 stars, the price, contents, and her overall thoughts on each one, so she could track exactly how much she spent trying the different breakfast burritos.
Since beginning her journey last year, Shea — a VP of product development for a cannabis and hemp company with a background as a pastry chef — has tried 38 breakfast burritos and spent $515 on them.
Love breakfast burrito-style
She also decided to share her findings via social media and recorded videos for Instagram and TikTok ,
Her reasoning for doing all this was her sheer love of breakfast burritos.
Out of the many Shea has tried so far, some standouts include the Doubtless Breakfast Burrito ($15) from Doubting Thomas in Historic Filipinotown. It's made with pork shoulder, fried eggs with a runny yolk, cheese, peppers, and roasted potatoes.
"It sounded heavy and super dense, and I thought it would knock me out all day. But I was blown away. The eggs were high-quality, perfectly cooked, and like a runny yolk throughout the burrito. And it was covered in this delicious sauce," Shea said.
It was then Shea realized that in her pursuit of finding the best breakfast burrito in L.A., she needed to try things out of her comfort zone, and there was a certain beauty in that.
Other standouts include La Azteca Tortilleria in East L.A., featuring their freshly made tortillas to order.
"I usually expect to want a potato-based burrito, but this one had refried beans," Shea said. "And it was like the best bean and cheese burrito, but make it breakfast, you'd ever had. And I think it was just everything from the fresh-pressed tortilla. It's filled to the brim, and it was $12."
Her ranking system
Shea used the 1-to-5 ranking system to keep things simple. Taste is a significant factor in determining the ranking. Size and price are also vital in better understanding each breakfast burrito's value, which Shea feels is missing from the conversation regarding "best of" lists.
While Shea tries to be as holistic as possible with her rankings, she has received her share of pushback from online commenters.
"People have been a little upset about some of my ratings," she said. "After trying one, I responded that it was a good burrito, but it cost me $18 and was small. So to me, I can't give it a high rating. I'm trying to balance all of the different aspects of it."
Given her background as a pastry chef who has worked in restaurants and serious catering jobs, she believes understanding food costs is relevant when discussing the best breakfast burritos.
"Anytime I'm looking at menu prices, I'm like, 'Oh yeah. That makes sense. Look at the quality of the egg. It makes sense that this is $17,'" Shea said. "I'm constantly assessing, in general, just how I spend my money. That's the angle that I approach it from."
Breakfast burritos forever
Shea said she averages at least one breakfast burrito a week. "Sometimes, if I feel crazy and have enough time, I can get two burritos weekly. But, first of all, you can only eat so many burritos before you tap out," she added.
In addition to her rankings, Shea has fun with the format using zeitgeist tendencies on social media. Her videos take on the form of a "Get Ready With Me," aka "GRWM," where she spends the first couple of seconds of the video styling her hair and applying makeup. There's a playful nature to each of her videos. The bio on TikTok states, "Get ready with me to eat alone in my car," where she does most of the reviews.
"I think there's a bit of humor in it," she said. "What mattered to me is that I never want somebody to think I take myself so seriously, and I think I'm like the queen of breakfast burritos. I'm just getting ready to eat a burrito and loading it into my car just to try one. It's not that serious. It's just a burrito."
