Eating Mission

Hackney is a great place to live as a food lover, because it offers such variety. As a neighbourhood in transition, there are so many parts to its history and culture that lead to tasty food - Vietnamese, Turkish and Caribbean restaurants from waves of people who settled here, fancy innovative restaurants, greasy spoon cafes, greasy luxe junk food. It's all here.

So when I stay in other big cities I seek out neighbourhoods that have similar characteristic. The Mission is San Francisco's neighbourhood in transition. A veritable multicultural hub where people from all walks of life seem to rub along just fine. Happily, it has one of San Francisco's best micro-climates: it is often sunny while other parts of the city are shrouded in fog and drizzle.

The Mission did us very well for eating, and here are some of my favourite spots. See also my street food post for more Mission treats.

Taqueria Cancun
It's no shadow of a lie that you can't move in Mission for amazing Mexican food. Mission Street in particular is home to dozens of brilliant taqueiras, some open 24 hours a day, serving up fresh and authentic Mexican food that would have Londoners queueing around the block and throwing money at. We ended up at Cancun on our first night in a jetlagged fug, and had shrimp burrito, pork carnita super tacos, and the veggie equivalents.



It was good honest Mexican comfort food at its best, incredible ingredients, creamy thick slices of avocado, punchy home made salsas and constantly replenishing taco chips. This is probably bog standard as far as Mission taqueiras are concerned, but it was lovely, warm, fresh and filling.

Mission Chinese Food

It's a concept screaming out for wider adoption - ramshackle DIY vibe, innovative and punky spins on Chinese food. We had cumin rubbed pungent lamb ribs, thrice cooked bacon and rice cakes, curried fried rice with pork, crab and pineapple, and some small plates with different coloured potatoes, pickles and heirloom tomatoes, pickled peanuts, pickles. All very on trend locally sourced, seasonal, old cuts meets Asian spices and flavours.

As you might expect, it's walk-ins only, but works a bit better than London because there's a list and you get a well approximated waiting time, so it's enough time to get a drink somewhere warm while you wait. Although maybe we have queues in London because we like queueing?


Limon Rotisserie
"It's our version of Nando's" a San Franciscan very incorrectly told me. No, it's so much better. Sure, it's a mid-range mini chain serving up (rotisserie, in this case) chicken. But Limon is renowned for it's affordable, tasty ceviche. We had their mixed cold ceviche (prawns, calamari, white fish), their mixed hot ceviche (all of the same ingredients, but FRIED, and served with a spicy, aromatic dippy dressing.  Some of the best I've had, and at a fair price.



The chicken was tasty, as were the sides of fried yucca, sweet potato fries, truffled mac and cheese, and a so so San Franciscan deconstructed Russian salad with purple potatoes, local beetroot, shredded carrot, avo and aioli. We also enjoyed expertly mixed, frothy pisco sours. If only Nando's Dalston mixed up a good pisco sours. If only.


Bar Tartine
San Francisco is famous for being the birthplace of California cuisine, which is all about eating locally and seasonally, but blending the influences of indiginous and incomer. It tends to be pretty pricey, but there's good value to be found. We opted for Bar Tartine for our final meal in San Francisco, following a recommendation from a trusted foodie.





The combinations were so complex and specific that I've long forgotten them. The pictures speak for themselves, really, but some of the highlights included: salmon three ways in buttermilk; seedy, herby flatbread with amazing hummus and dukkah; assortments of pickles in jars; kale with seeds and homemade yoghurt (so so SF); tripe in a paprika broth; and cheese dumplings in a chanterelle stew.



The waiting staff were incredibly knowledgeable, the vibe jovial, the winelist very nicely put together with lots of local Californian wines. It was the perfect place to experience San Francisco's haute cuisine without breaking the bank.

San Francisco street food

I spent most of September roadtripping around California. Pretty much the most amazing holiday I'll ever have. We started off in San Francisco, tripped inland to Yosemite, back to the coast to drive down Big Sur, and then powered down to Los Angeles.

California truly felt like the world in a place - prairies, mountains, desserts, coasts, cities, wealth, poverty, liberals, conservatives, skinnies, fatties. Not quite the image of tattooed yoga-obsessed wheatgrass-shot-chugging lifeguards we might have over in Britain.

The food was amazing. There were fresh, local ingredients in abundance at every price point. Cuisines from across the world were represented - Armenian? You got it! A specific region in El Salvador? I know just the place. But particularly well represented was food from Mexico, Central and South America, and from the Pacific Rim. Street food is also big, with lots of creativity in that scene and the Californian cuisine.

I'm going to do a few posts about my trip, but I'll kick off with one about San Francisco's street food.
The scene seems to be highly organised, in particular by the Off the Grid crew, who have a roster of street food vendors operating at 23 weekly food markets of varying sizes - their biggest is at Fort Mason on Friday nights and has about 30 stalls. The focus is on high quality, innovative fusions of cultures and cuisines, and prices start at around $8 a dish.

 Bok Ssam's Korean Chicken Waffle

Revising the classic Southern comfort fish of chicken and waffle (brought to our shores with Duck and Waffle), but with herby, spicy Korean fried chicken, tangy Asian slaw, and lots of sticky, sweet, spicy sauce. And the waffles act as sandwich rather than a plate. It was a great combination, and surprisingly un-messy...

The Chairman Truck's Taiwanese buns

Another Off the Grid favourite, The Chairman specialises in Taiwanese baked and steamed buns, which are terribly trendy right now. This is reflected in the queues at their stall wherever they pitch up - innovative Asian is a big deal in San Francisco. We opted for steamed - one with caramelly pork belly and turmeric pickled daikon radish, the other with miso marinaded tofu and raw cavolo nero.

Curry up now's indian burrito and butter chicken chilli cheese fries 

Curry up now is one of the San Francisco street food scene's success stories - starting off as a truck, it's now got three proper restaurants throughout the Bay Area, but still moonlights at a fair number of Off the Grid events. We were looking for "something healthy", but couldn't avoid the temptation of sweet potato waffle fries, topped with creamy, rich butter chicken sauce, and then lots of melted cheese. This went nicely with the burrito - of pilau rice, really flavoursome Punjabi curry, chick peas and onions. Pork belly and beef featured as options, which would make you question its authenticity in the UK, but in California it's all about fusion, and here's another example of good, unpretentious mixing of cultures and tastes to delicious ends.

SOMA StrEat Food Park


SOMA StrEat Food Park is a little oasis tucked between motorway flyovers and entrances, in this no man's land if infrastructure and industry between Mission, Downtown and the hilly northern parts of the city. It's an area in flux - Twitter will soon be moving in to their new headquarters up the street, but hobos pace the streets pushing their trollies, and hostels spill out onto the street. But the crowds pouring through for Tuesday lunch suggest there's already quite the draw.

I opted for Hawaiian food as soon as I saw the cart - an exciting new cultural foray. My $8 got me a generous portion of sweet, slow cooked pork with sesame seeds, really tasty kimchi, a coconut-y, mayo-y cold macaroni salad, and sticky coconut rice. It was homely and authentic, and good to taste a new set of flavours.

But I was slightly jealous of all my friends, all of whom opted for Korean-Japanese rice bun burgers and chilli cheese fries from KoJa Kitchen. I remember hearing about Yo! Sushi entering the burger market with a similar concept and being very sceptical, but this is the real deal - and utterly delicious. Slow cooked, marinaded pork, pungent, earthy pickles, Asian variants on tomato sauce and mayo. The Asian chilli cheese fries were particularly good.

Dynamo Donut, Mission


Dynamo make seriously delicious doughnuts - and sell them from a cafe in Mission and kiosk by the marina. They make creative use of ingredients and flavours in both the dough and the glaze. We particularly enjoyed the maple and smoked bacon for its swavoury taste, while the lemon and pistachio and the apricot and cardamom had a slightly exotic aromaticness. A delicious if not quite health-giving breakfast to power us through a day of scaling San Francisco's hills.