Best Chorizo

We're not morning people. We admit it. If God had meant for people to be awake in the morning, he wouldn't have had to create alarm clocks.

There's little that can convince us to leave our warm bed at the crack of dawn (has anyone else noticed that a mattress never fits so perfectly as it does just before we're forced to leave it?).

Good chorizo is one of those things, though, that rouses our head from the pillow, summons us to our slippers, and gets us to greet the day with a smile.

That's a pretty big accomplishment for just $4.50, but La Cabana pulls it off with its huevos con chorizo meal (to be accurate, the dish should read chorizo con huevos, such is the generous ratio of highly spiced chile-vinegar-garlic sausage to egg). The sausage is a wonderful jump-start to the day -- dry, salty, smoky -- and only gets better when we fold it into a corn tortilla spread with gorgeously runny refried beans.

Sometimes we mix it up, adding thin guacamole from the on-ice salsa bar, alternating munches with bites of cool lettuce, radish, and cucumber drizzled with lime. A cold horchata drink is just the thing, too, tasting comfortingly like wet tapioca and soothing some of the chorizo burn.

The only problem? After finishing the plate, we're so stuffed, we want to go right back to bed.