Lucky Bird is launching a fried chicken breakfast burrito at Grand Central Market

May 17, 2019 8:28 AM PT

Breakfast burritos — a flour tortilla stuffed to capacity with scrambled eggs, cheese, potatoes and insert-your-favorite-meat-here — are basically their own Southern California food group. And when someone makes a really good one, Angelenos tend to notice.

Chris Dade, chef-owner of the Lucky Bird food stall inside Grand Central Market, grew up eating the enormous breakfast burritos at Lucky Boy in Pasadena.

“It’s one of my favorite breakfast burritos of all time,” he said, “and I’ve always wanted to have a breakfast item to call my own.”

Instead of the more common sausage or bacon as the meat of choice, Dade stayed true to his brand and went with fried chicken.

He slices a chicken thigh into bite-size nuggets before dredging and frying them for optimum crunchiness. He sweats onions and jalapenos in chicken fat, then folds them into soft scrambled eggs along with chopped cilantro and a substantial amount of melty American cheese. Finally, he adds fried hunks of Yukon gold potatoes.

It’s an excellent breakfast burrito. If you took out the chicken, it would still be an excellent breakfast burrito. But then you get a piece of fried chicken and you wonder why it’s taken so long for someone to concoct one of these.

If you’re thinking this would taste even better with hot sauce, you’re correct. While this won’t technically be available on the menu, you can order the burrito “wet” (slathered in a hot buffalo sauce with a zigzag of creme fraiche).

The fried chicken breakfast burrito ($9) will be available from 10 to 11 a.m. on Saturdays and Sundays, starting this weekend.