Each week, we review a different breakfast spot in town, highlighting culinary offerings, brunchability, and the overall vibe as you sip your morning joe. Whether the restaurant in question is grab-and-go or stay-and-play, each offers a unique breakfast buzz that might be just what you need for the most important meal of the day.
The Spot: Comedor Guadalajara
1830 South Central Avenue; 602-253-8299.
The Scene: Some days, you need a huge Mexican breakfast to change things up, keep them steady, help your hangover, or lift your mood. And on those mornings, consider Comedor Guadalajara.
Comedor, a Mexican restaurant in South Phoenix, fills a space that feels like a warehouse. A sloping ceiling that looks covered with crinkled aluminum reflects light down into the dining room. Tables are nicely spaced. You feel like you have room to talk, to really relax. You feel that some of the regulars have been sitting at the same tables for a long time. Some of the tables even show breakfast appetizers, shareable plates like cheese quesadillas to nibble on before the real thing.
Service is warm, sincere, efficient. A huge staff flits around, mindful of your meal. Huge bowls of menudo are steadily emptied. Egg-crammed breakfast burritos slowly vanish. The dining area is partitioned from the larger space of the room. There are large plants, colorful vases.
The Goods: Mexican breakfast in Phoenix reaches one of its heights with Comedor. You could eat here for five days in a row and still have dishes you would want to try.
The food at Comedor has a warm, homestyle essence. You can feel the aura of home in the hot sluice of beans, the velvety red sauce that drowns the chilaquiles, in the smooth tangy salsa and the hunks of tripe that bob to the surface of menudo. (You can get a small cup of menudo to try alongside your main dish.)
Choosing what to eat, though, will be hard. At Comedor, you can get eggs with shrimp, red or green chile, two kinds of steak, ham, bacon, chorizo, and lots more. You can get eggs with red chile and nopalitos. You can get huevos rancheros and breakfast enchiladas, breakfast chicharrones, and breakfast chimichangas.
Chilaquiles come smothered. The tortillas retain their crisp even though they're sopping with deep velvety sauce the color of Kidney beans. The textural difference between beans and sauce is surprisingly slight, and pleasant, especially if you've ordered your crowning eggs so that the yolk will be runny.The menudo is simple, light and deep at once, and comforting. It has the kind of rich hot flavors that can make your morning.
The Bottom Line: Come here for a boss Mexican breakfast.
Special Something: Menudo on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday
Hours: Wednesday and Thursday 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Friday and Saturday 8 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Sunday 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Monday and Tuesday closed.
Price: $$
Juice: Standard
Coffee Options: Nothing too fancy
Our last five Breakfast Beat stories:
Chloe's Corner
The Canal Club
Roland's
Tryst
Phoenix Burrito House