A fast-casual restaurant called Burrito Bear is under construction at 380 Broome Street in Lower Manhattan, promising to bring Denver's smothered green chile breakfast burrito to a stretch of Nolita better known for bagels than pork stew. The concept, which plans to debut this fall, will serve burritos filled with bacon, chorizo, chicken, eggs and cheese, alongside the green chile that defines Denver's breakfast culture.
Ryan Shea, a partner of Burrito Bear, said the goal is to bring an entire regional food identity across the country rather than just a single dish. As reported by WhatNow, Shea said Burrito Bear will bring Denver's beloved breakfast burrito style to New York City, complete with a bear mascot in a cowboy hat and other Denver iconography woven into the branding.
Central to that identity is green chile itself, which despite the name is not a chili pepper condiment but a pork stew, according to the same report. That distinction matters to anyone expecting a simple hot sauce: Denver-style green chile traditionally blends tomato sauce, garlic, pork and a light roux into a thick, gravy-like mixture built specifically for smothering burritos under melted cheese, a texture and flavor profile that Denver Westword notes sets it apart from New Mexican-style green chile.
A Denver Institution Heads East
Colorado takes its breakfast burrito seriously enough to have institutionalized it. Denver's mayor proclaimed an annual Breakfast Burrito Day back in 2016, and Governor Jared Polis expanded the celebration statewide in 2019, per Denver Westword. The scale of the industry behind that celebration is significant, too, with Front Range chain Santiago's alone processing more than a million pounds of Hatch green chiles a year for its sauce, the outlet reports.
The dish's roots trace back decades earlier and to a different state. While portable morning wraps existed in Southwestern home cooking well before that, the term breakfast burrito was first put on a commercial menu in 1975 at Tia Sophia's diner in Santa Fe, New Mexico, according to the Ouray Riverside Resort. The chile itself typically relies on Pueblo chiles grown in Southern Colorado, which range from 5,000 to 20,000 Scoville Heat Units, roughly the heat of a moderate jalapeño or hotter, per the Colorado Department of Agriculture.
Filling a Gap in New York's Breakfast Scene
New York's morning food identity has long been built around bacon, egg and cheese sandwiches on bagels, making a tortilla smothered in green chile a structural departure from what most New Yorkers grab on their way to work, according to Eat This NY. Shea told WhatNow that Burrito Bear's burritos are meant to offer an easy meal people can grab before work, and he added that New York has a dedicated group of people who enjoy trying new foods.
Burrito Bear would not be the first Southwestern breakfast concept to test that appetite. Eat This NY points to the earlier success of James Beard-nominated Ursula in Crown Heights and Santa Fe BK in Williamsburg as evidence that green-chile breakfast fare already has a foothold in the city, ahead of Burrito Bear's planned fall opening at its Broome Street location.
The Space Burrito Bear Is Taking Over
The storefront becoming Burrito Bear was, until recently, home to LuAnne's Wild Ginger, an all-vegan Pan-Asian restaurant that occupied 380 Broome Street for more than a decade before permanently closing its Lower Manhattan location in July, according to HappyCow. That closure freed up the retail space in the six-story, 41-unit residential rental building constructed in 1900 at the intersection of Broome and Mott Streets, on the border of Nolita and Little Italy, per StreetEasy.
The location also sits close to a built-in customer base. New York University's Broome Street Residence Hall, home to roughly 350 upper-year students, is about two blocks away, according to the university, offering the kind of morning foot traffic that a fast-casual breakfast concept depends on.
