The Pugilist with Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez

The Pugilist with Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez

What Do You Mean I Can't Find a Breakfast Burrito in Mexico?

On the embarrassing realization that my favorite "Mexican" breakfast food is actually a United States invention, and discovering the next best thing: the mollete.

Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez's avatar
Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez
Jun 30, 2026
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While I offer all my news writing, investigative journalism and news analysis for free, I am paywalling my new “Diary in Exile” personal essays about fleeing the United States of America as a journalist under attack and forced to rebuild her life in middle age abroad. Boundaries. If these diary entries interest you, please consider an upgraded subscription!

Molletes at Rustica restaurant in San Miguel de Allende

I have eaten approximately four thousand breakfast burritos in my life. Mostly from Blakes, in my beloved home state of New Mexico. Sometimes Twisters, in a bind. Carne adovada, green chile, extra cheese, wrapped so tight it could survive a fall from a moving truck. I have eaten them in gas stations, at funerals, on the way to the airport, standing up in my own kitchen at 6 a.m. while yelling at someone to find their shoes. In New Mexico, the breakfast burrito is not a menu item. It is a civic institution. It is closer to a constitutional right. And until I left the United States for Mexico a couple of weeks ago, a given I never thought I would have to do without.

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