La Tejana, Mount Pleasant, Washington, DC

I’d been meaning to try La Tejana at 3211 Mount Pleasant Avenue since I saw that they’d teamed up to offer breakfast tacos with brisket from 2fifty Texas.

I like breakfast tacos, and I dearly love the brisket from 2fifty. I also love their sausage and their pastrami, and … But I digress. I was immediately prompted to go to La Tejana when I saw that they’d had been added to the Michelin Bib Gourmand list for Washington. I’ve relied on the Bib Gourmand list extensively, especially in France. It lists top restaurants at which you can have two courses and a drink or dessert for $40 or less. That is, you can get a very good meal at a reasonable price — at least in theory. These days, staying under $40 can require ingenuity or a time machine.

Not so at La Tejana. It takes ingenuity to spend $40 there. They sell breakfast tacos for $4.50 each, three for $13, and coffee, $3.75 for a large. They also offer horchata and some other non-alcoholic drinks. They close at 1:00 p.m.

The 2fifty brisket taco costs $7, which shouldn’t surprise anyone who has purchased prime brisket recently, and it’s sold separately from the three-for deal.

As it happened, I learned about La Tejana’s good news right after I’d been chatting with my friend Frank McAuliffe about restaurants. I immediately alerted Frank, and off we went to La Tejana the very next morning.

La Tejana is in the heart of lively and substantially Latino Mount Pleasant. We arrived around 9:30 a.m., two hours after they opened, and after the initial rush was over. It was a Wednesday, usually the best day to go to a popular restaurant. La Tejana is a tiny place, with room for two, maybe three, at a tiny counter, and a handful more to wait in line inside. Here’s a photo taken from the doorway.

Tables are set up outside on the curb lane, which you can see in the exterior shot above. Since it was a bright, sunny morning, outside was a good place to sit.

Frank and I each ordered the same three tacos, the 956 (scrambled eggs with cheese, bacon, fried potatoes, refried beans, a touch of queso, and some cilantro), La Chorippa (the same with house-cured chorizo rather than bacon), and the 512 (with 2fifty’s brisket). La Tejana also offers several attractive meatless options, some with eggs, and a couple without, one of which is vegan. It includes refined pintos, tomato, poblano, onions, potatoes, and some vegan “cheese,” all wrapped up in that glorious tortilla.

Breakfast tacos are not the most photogenic foods in the world, and you don’t want to lift the hood for a long time to see what’s inside on a cool day. Here’s an exterior view

and a partially open view

and a full frontal, so to speak.

Breakfast tacos follow a pretty basic formula — eggs. meat, cheese, salsa or other topping — so what makes La Tejana’s special enough for Michelin stars?

I’m glad you asked. First, the flour tortillas are superb, as good as any I can remember except maybe for those at Valentina’s in Austin. If you haven’t had a great tortilla, and you probably haven’t, you may not believe the difference they make. The eggs, too, are very well cooked, neither over-cooked, as eggs usually are, but not excessively creamy. The meat fillings are great. Bacon is great by definition, the chorizo is very good, and the brisket from 2fifty is the best you’re going to find closer than Texas. The sauces tie everything together, and you get an excellent breakfast.

One final point, La Tejana moves the food to you quickly. You order, you take a sip of coffee, and they call your name. Your food is ready. It doesn’t sit up there waiting for someone to pick it up. It moves. You get it hot and fresh. This is an efficient, professional operation.

You’ve gathered that I give a hearty recommendation to La Tejana — me and Michelin. (We’re like that.) As many of you have noticed, I rarely review places that I don’t recommend for something or other — only the ones that really … disappoint me. La Tejana is a gem, and you owe it to yourself to enjoy some excellent breakfast tacos. Hurry!

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