Family-owned Joe’s Bakery & Coffee Shop has been a popular East Side establishment since 1962. If you’ve never been there or it’s been a while, you should plan a visit immediately. Now that you’ve done that, great. More about Joe’s: This is a breakfast and lunch spot, basically a Tex-Mex/Mexican restaurant with a counter and booths and a jukebox playing Tejano jams in the background. There are dishes like pancakes, huevos ranchero, crispy tacos and enchiladas. The breakfast is phenomenal and served all day – so there’s often a wait on weekends when the place is packed with East Side regulars, UT kids, construction workers, city officials, and families after church on Sundays.
People are clamoring for breakfast tacos made with fluffy homemade flour tortillas, especially the migas taco con todo, which adds pico de gallo to its excellent migas taco. Joe’s super-crispy bacon defies the laws of physics of pork belly—you can order it as a side or add it to a breakfast taco, where it hangs out like a tortilla is too petite a hammock. And don’t miss the carne guisada. Here, it’s made with pork, and the meat is so tender it rivals anything you’d find in a fancy French restaurant. Joe’s is also a bakery that offers a huge selection of pancakes—be sure to stock up on the pink pastry and conch shells when you leave.
Food Summary
photo source: Richard Casteel
Oil and gas
As The Legend of Zelda or a 1964 Pontiac GTO muscle car, the migas at Joe’s are classic, legendary, and genre-defining. There may be many imitators, but very few come close to achieving the near-perfect blend of pliable scrambled eggs and slightly crispy tortillas, all topped with cheese.
photo source: Richard Casteel
Tacos for breakfast
Breakfast tacos at Joe’s are made with fluffy, lightly grilled homemade flour tortillas. While you can simply order a migas plate (which includes tortillas so you can make your own mini-tacos), when you order breakfast tacos, you can order a variety of things. Our standard order is a migas taco, a bacon, egg, and cheese taco, and a carne guisada taco.
photo source: Richard Casteel
Bacon
The crispy bacon at Joe’s is the best bacon you can imagine. It’s coated in flour, chilled overnight, and pan-fried, which helps keep the bacon slices flat, holds their shape, and is more evenly cooked than the standard curly bacon you’ll find in many places. You should order a side dish to share.
photo source: Richard Casteel
Sweet bread
It’s called Joe’s Bakery & Coffee Shop for a reason, because part of the operation is actually a bakery. You can tell by the huge glass cases of dulce at the entrance. Joe’s is probably best known for its pink cake. You can order it as a snack while you wait for a table, or eat it on the way out.
