What's the food culture in Austin?

Austin wakes up to breakfast tacos, and the city has eaten them this way since at least the 1980s. The format is a 6-inch flour tortilla, folded once, around scrambled eggs and one protein. Veracruz All Natural on East Cesar Chavez has served the benchmark migas taco since 2008. Eggs scrambled with torn tortilla strips, jalapeño, tomato, and Monterey Jack for $4.75. The tortilla has a slight chew that the gas-station versions can't replicate. Joe's Bakery on East 7th Street opened in 1962 and hand-presses its tortillas thicker, with a floury softness you feel before you bite. By 9am on a Saturday, both spots run a 20-minute line. Tacodeli on Barton Springs Road does a more polished take, and the Cowboy taco there (beef, corn, jalapeño, Jack cheese) has been on the menu since the restaurant opened in 1999.

Central Texas barbecue runs on post oak smoke and salt-and-pepper rubs, and Austin is where the competition is fiercest. Franklin Barbecue on East 11th Street moved from a trailer into its brick-and-mortar in 2011, and the line still forms at 7am for an 11am open. At $32 a pound, the brisket carries a bark so dark it looks charred, but cut into it and you hit the pink smoke ring, with fat that dissolves on your tongue. If 4 hours in a parking lot doesn't appeal, la Barbecue in East Austin keeps comparable quality with a 90-minute wait most Saturdays. Micklethwait Craft Meats has operated as a trailer in East Austin since 2012, and their jalapeño-cheddar sausage has a snappy natural casing that might be the best single item in the city. LeRoy and Lewis runs a newer operation on South Congress, rotating cuts weekly. Mind you, Austin barbecue sells out. Most joints close by 2pm or when the brisket is gone, so a 5pm dinner craving means locked doors and cold smokers.

Tex-Mex is not Mexican food, and Austin serves both, sometimes on the same block. Tex-Mex arrived with the German-Mexican ranching culture of the 1880s and runs on yellow cheese, cumin, and flour tortillas. Matt's El Rancho on South Lamar has been open since 1952, making it one of Austin's oldest restaurants. The Bob Armstrong dip, a bowl of chile con queso topped with guacamole, taco meat, and sour cream, was invented at Matt's in 1975 for a Texas Land Commissioner who wanted everything on the menu at once. You'll find copies at 50 restaurants across the city now. That said, Matt's original still has a looser, more liquid texture. For actual Mexican food, head to the taco trucks on East Riverside Drive. Rosita's Al Pastor near Pleasant Valley Road shaves pork off a vertical spit at $2.75 a taco, and the meat carries a char-sweet edge from pineapple fat dripping down the trompo. The sizzle when it hits the flat-top fills the truck window.

Austin permitted its first food-trailer parks around 2006, and the format reshaped the city's eating habits. The count currently sits above 1,000 licensed mobile food vendors. South Congress Avenue between Barton Springs Road and Elizabeth Street has the tourist-ready cluster, but the more interesting trucks tend to park on the east side. East Cesar Chavez and East 6th near Chicon Street have trailers doing Northern Thai, Korean-Mexican fusion, and wood-fired pizza for $8-14 a plate. Most trucks post hours on Instagram and close when supply runs out, which on a Saturday can mean 1pm. After midnight, options narrow fast. Kerbey Lane Cafe runs 4 locations open 24 hours, and the queso there arrives in a cast-iron skillet, still bubbling at the edges. The Whataburger on Guadalupe Street near the UT campus handles the post-6th-Street crowd starting around 2am.