Armando from Chotto with his sake-braised pork belly tacos.

This Thursday will be the second of our Spring 2011 guest chef series at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market stand. (Last Thursday, Hoss Zare of Zaré at Flytrap made his move.) A fundraiser for CUESA (Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture), the folks behind the nationally-renowed market itself, all proceeds from our guest chefs’ tacos go right back to CUESA. Last year we raised $8,000! Look who’s cooking for the next eight weeks—and what.

Mark your calendars and come check it out: Thursdays, 10 am to 2 pm, Ferry Plaza Farmers Market, Tacolicious stand. Any TBD’s below will be filled in as we get the information.

June 2
Chef: Anjan Mitra, Dosa
Tacos: spicy Goan balchoa (red chilies, mustard, fennel, cloves, garlic) tacos and South Indian goat curry (fennel, cumin, tomato, poppy seeds, caramelized oinions)

June 9
Chef: Armando Justo, Chotto
Taco: kakuni (sake-braised, crispy pork belly)

June 16
Chef: Thomas McNaughton, Flour + Water
Taco: fried pork belly with Calabrian chilies and salsa verde

June 23
Chef: Scott Youkilis, Hog and Rocks
Taco: cochinita pibil with pickled red onion, carrot and habanero salsa and borrego asado (charred avocado and sundried tomato purée)

June 30
Chef: Nick Balla, Bar Tartine
Taco: smoked brisket, pickled cabbage, sour cream, horseradish, tomato

July 7
Chef: Brandon Jew, Bar Agricole
Taco: padron peppers, squash blossoms and queso fresco with pickled okra

July 14
Chef: Jessica Boncutter, Bar Jules
Taco: braised pork, oaxaca chiles, carrots, capers, olives, pine nuts, currants

July 21
Chef: David Bazirgan, Fifth Floor
Taco: tongue and cheek (halibut cheek and crispy duck tongue with garlic scape kimchee, smoked aioli, charred cabbage, lime and avocado crema)

July 28
Chef: Jake Godby, Humphry Slocombe
Taco/dessert: Strawberry margarita popsicle

Hoss Zare kicked off our guest chef program last Thursday. (photo by Lulu Meyer)

Michael Tusk: Duck tacos with red cabbage and spiced quince coming right up

In the spring of this year, some of the city’s top chefs, from Delfina’s Craig Stoll to Betelnut’s Alex Ong, took over the Tacolicious Thursday market stand for a day and cooked up some outstanding tacos. (The octopus and potato taco from former Fish & Farm chef Chad Newton might have been my favorite, but Craig’s cabeza taco—inspired by a floating cow head he saw bob up to the surface of a pot one blurry, mescal-y night in Mexico—was another memorable one.) We had A16 chef Liza Shaw, former Laiola chef Mark Denham. You name the best chefs in SF, they were at the market slinging tacos.

With a kickoff of hog jowl tacos from Bar Tartine chef Chris Kronner last Thursday, our eight-week guest taco chef program is back. All proceeds from our guest chefs’ tacos go to CUESA (Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture), the non-profit behind the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market. Last year we raised over $5000 to go towards CUESA’s educational programs.

The confirmed chef dates are below (including two of the city’s fine-dining chefs and one of our favorite chefs in town, Hoss Zaré), but also in attendance will be chefs Jennifer Puccio of Marlowe, Grace Nguyen of Out the Door and Massimiliano Conti of La Ciccia. Stay tuned on the Tacolicious’s Facebook page and Twitter feed to find out the dates of all the chefs and what they’ll be making.

See you at the market, Thursdays, 10 am to 2 pm. Come and get it!

Confirmed dates:
October 21, Michael Tusk, Quince
October 28, Hoss Zare, Zaré at Flytrap
November 3, Josh Skenes, Saison

courtesy of bencollsuss via flickr

On SF Gate’s Inside Scoop today, the honorable Paolo Lucchesi sat down with the venerable Rick Bayless to talk shop. After he got done waxing on about his good eating in SF (none of it Mexican), he got down to business. A man with a sharp mind, Bayless always has some interesting things to say.

“Mexican food in California has been so incredibly limited to the taqueria style. It’s like if you went to France and say American food is just hot dogs—it’s good but it’s not the whole story. Everyone is so focused on taquerias. It’s a very, very small amount of cuisine in Mexico.”

“I’m looking for a chef to have the guts to rise above and do a fine dining restaurant that really showcases the real food of Mexico. [ed's note: yes!] And it seems people are clamoring for that. Granted you need the background and have to travel in Mexico—you don’t learn it in culinary school. But I still think there’s someone in San Francisco that can do that.”

“I think Mexican food in LA tends to be quite bland. There are places that are doing the real thing, but it’s mostly sticking to the taqueria model. There’s a little bit lighter, fresher quality to what I’ve tasted in San Francisco, but there seems to be a sameness to what you get in LA. It tends to be gringo-ized to me. Not all, but most.” [Interestingly, Bayless just opened a place in LA called Red O. Read what Grubstreet had to report.]

“There’s a bit of investment in our country in keeping our image of Mexico and Mexican food as low, cheap and not worthy of our attention. I’ve been on the other side of that my whole life, because I first went to Mexico as a kid and found it to be the most enriching culture and wanted to bring it back through food.” [yes, yes, yes!]

“In the United States—and in a lot of cases, California, because of its large immigrant population—there’s become a stereotype of what Mexican cuisine should be, and it’s hard to break out of it.”

“I have a Mexican soul but not a Mexican grandmother, so I don’t have to be slavish about adhering to one particular family recipe. I think that if we’re going to break out, we have to see the country in a different way than the way we’ve stereotyped it as poor, downtrodden and nothing but a beach getaway for us to play in. That’s a hard thing to get over.”

“People forget that Mexico City is a sophisticated, world-class city. There’s a chef in Oaxaca that’s doing molecular gastronomy things — he’s incredibly well-traveled and well-educated. We just have to be able to open our eyes to what’s really there, and wipe out the Cancun and Mazatlan images from our minds.”

Nice interview Lucchesi.

Donnie Masterton and Joe at The Restaurant

The last time I was in San Miguel de Allende, I was going through a divorce. It was my first Christmas without my boys and my parents had thought that it would be good for me to get away from it all, so they bought me an airline ticket to Mexico. My brother, who was single at the time too, came along and it was a family vacation like the days before I had a husband and children—a surreal scenario. The only crystal clear thing at that point in my life was that I was never, ever, you couldn’t pay-me-to-do-it, get married again.

Um, yeah. Sheepish smile.

Hello Joe Hargrave.

Who four 1/2 years later, I was now with, hand in hand, revisiting the same San Miguel markets and art galleries that I’d been to with my parents. To top off the bizarre life intersection, we spent a lot of the time hanging out with Joe’s old friend Donnie Masterton, who had been the opening chef for Azie restaurant, which was located next to Lulu, during its dot-com hey day in 1989. Joe worked there as the general manager. At that time, Azie was the shit. Pardon my Spanish.

Also, at that point in time, I was working at San Francisco magazine as a food editor. I didn’t know Joe. Joe didn’t know me. But I had dined at Azie (when most likely Joe was there), and what I knew of Donnie was that his food was exquisitely ahead of its time. Not to mention, he was the first guy to have a DJ at a restaurant and he even proceeded the masses with a knife tattoo on his forearm. Azie was cooler than San Francisco in some ways. Donnie, as Joe has always said, was a trailblazer.

And now, Donnie is in San Miguel, brought there by 9/11 and chef burnout, reinvigorated by a new, mellower lifestyle that allows him to spend time with his two young girls and still run a restaurant. He recently opened his own place called The Restaurant at Sollano 16, serving food that is not by any means Mexican but would be impressive in any sophisticated city, anywhere in the world.

Joe and I dined there on our last night, which was perfect, because honestly, at that point, I couldn’t look another taco in the face. Donnie’s cooking has softened around the edges, just like all us old folks. He sources locally and organically when he can, which is a challenge down there.

My first thought, sitting in the restaurant’s lovely outdoor courtyard and biting into a simple but artful pickled beet salad with local goat cheese, was that  his subtly eclectic cooking—although not as edgy as 10 years ago—has a finesse that would impress even the jaded folks of San Francisco. Donnie has the touch, no doubt. And a pretty enviable life, considering how gorgeous and chill San Miguel is.

Sometimes things just work out.

Perbacco's chef is a regular the market.

First taco memory?
Being from Sweden, unfortunately it was at Taco Bell. Also, although it’s not a true taco, in Sweden, we make something similar called a “klamma.” It’s a flat bread from the northern part of Sweden, almost identical to a flour tortilla. It’s filled with surstromming, the infamous fermented herring—very stinky, it’s an aquired taste—diced onion, new potatoes, sour cream, chives and dill. Add some cold beer and a couple shots of aquavit and you’re good to go.

Most memorable taco?
The first time I had taco de lengua I was living in Santa Barbara. My friends and I decided to find the best taco truck in the area. I think we went to 15 in a day. One in Oxnard had a vast menu of unusual cuts and the tongue was outstanding. Since the, I always judge a taco truck or a taqueria by their tongue tacos. There’s a fine line between rubbery and overcooked. And the salsa verde can’t be wimpy. Brain tacos with egg aren’t bad either.

What inspired your sardine taco?
I wanted to do a fish taco because it’s very California, but with a fish that represents this area. I love sardines. I’m a big advocate for fish from the dark side, as I call them. Full flavor and good for you. Sardines, mackerel, albacore tuna, blue fish, etc. I get tired of people giving me the sustainable mantra, and turning their nose up at these fish and say “It’s fishy.” So it’s a little bit of my own political agenda.

What taquerias do you frequent here?
If I have time, it’s the El Tonayense taco truck parked by Best Buy. I get the lengua, al pastor and the carne asada.

You can see the article online, but as an editor myself, I never want to have to utter the words “print is dead”, so I hope you’ll go in support of the old fashioned way to get information and pick up a copy of a copy of this issue of the magazine.

Otherwise, there’s a nice slide show of tacos from all over the country with their recipes here and a homecooking-friendly version of our chorizo-potato taco (a slightly older version of it that I’m particularly fond of, especially if you let the potatoes get all crispy/mashy at the same time) is number three, including a simple recipe.

Also noted in the magazine, in their “Go List: 100 Best New Food & Drink Experiences” is Joe’s good friend and former SF chef (he opened Azie back in the dot-com hey day and also worked at NYC’s Montrachet), Donnie Masterton, selected for his new spot called The Restaurant in San Miguel, Mexico. Joe and I are going to be there the first week of May. We’ll be reporting back.

Ray Garcia at Fig restaurant.

Down in LA for my good friend Danielle’s wedding, Joe and I were lucky enough to be put up at the fancy Fairmont Miramar Hotel and Bungalows. We pulled our bug-splattered Subaru station wagon through the fancy gates where a battery of valets awaited us under the hotel’s famous Bay Fig—an immense, breathtakingly beautiful 150 year old specimen that reminded me of the Avatar home tree. I think James Cameron slept here.

I know I’m not the first one to say this, but I love LA. This is a newfound love, however. In snobby San Francisco fashion, I used to pride myself in saying that I hated it. I thought it was just an ugly, fake, strip-mall of a city compared to our pristine, walkable, European city. But LA has grown on me over the years. I’m starting to get it. I think my big revelation came when I started to appreciate its eccentricities, the sprawling wonder of it, the culture clash, the celebrity and the funk all intertwined.

And of course, the weather is ridiculous.

Which has bred a fantastic culture of outdoor dining—something I’m horribly envious of. And thanks to all the body-conscious health nuts here you can’t get a bad salad in LA. When I’m in LA, I become a voracious salad eater, something I’m not in SF.

The other thing LA does extraordinarily well is burgers. Oddly, this seems to go completely against the salad culture but I think it stems from LA’s embrace of Americana and retro. So when my family sat down outside (of course) to eat at Umami burger—the new hot spot my friend has been dying for me to try—we ordered both burger and salad and they were both made with great finesse. My favorite was the Triple Pork burger with chorizo, and Joe, of course, got the Hatch burger, with roasted green chilies and cheese (I’m now having visions of a late-night Mexican burger on the Tacolicious menu, but you’ll have to ask Telmo about that). This Santa Monica location of Umami burger is attached to Fred Segal so I ducked in for a little look-don’t-touch browsing afterwards. I think shopping, burger and salads might be the LA holy trinity.

It also could be argued that LA also has SF on Mexican. And people’s obsession with this food infiltrates everywhere you look. For instance, yesterday I had brunch at Fig, the Fairmont’s hotel restaurant run by chef Ray Garcia, who has cooked at the French Laundry and Cyrus. Joe and I looked at the menu, which has the usual brunch offerings (lemon ricotta pancakes, eggs benedict), to see that there was a “Taco Bar” offered as well. A quirky addition to say the least.

Turns out the chef was looking for a little outlet to his often corporate gig. We went up to the bar and had him prepare us a few antojito-sized tacos. Particularly delicious was one made with a soupy mix of roasted pasilla and poblano chilies oozy with cheese as well as one made with housemade chicharron and beans. All this and a beautiful hotel poolside view.

You know what I think? No matter the pedigree, every chef is just a taco waiting to happen.

Roasted chilies and cheese taco

What’s your first taco memory?
As kids my mom made us tacos with the store-bought crunchy shells, ground beef with ‘taco seasoning’, yellow cheese and chopped iceberg lettuce. The town I grew up in, Fremont, was chosen to be a test market for one of the very first Taco Bells in California. This was in the late sixties—they kinda set the standard for what a taco was supposed to be like. My first real taco experience was at my grandparent’s here in San Francisco. They lived on York betweet 21st & 22nd in the Mission, and my grandma made my sister and I traditional soft tacos, with double tortillas, slightly greasy, a simple meat filling—no lettuce, no cheese, no sour cream, and no black pitted olives. I’m sure my little sis and I thought she was crazy. These looked and tasted nothing like the tacos we knew. We were probably about 7 or 8 years old then.

Best taco memory?
I lived and traveled in Mexico for about a year in 1989, mostly in DF and I had many memorable tacos, one place called La Especial in the meat packing disrtict specialized in offal tacos. They had a hand-painted menu on the wall with about two dozen options, every thing from the usual items, tongue, tripe, liver, to the more exotic like spleen, brains and testicles, to outright oddities like trompa (muzzel), garganta (esophogus), pulmas (lungs), and my favoite: ojos (eyeballs). But my standard everyday taco was from a cart near the entrance of Chapultepec park that only sold ‘suadero’ tacos, that’s a euphemism for the sweepings from the butcher shop’s floor. Never quite knew what was in them but they were always delicious and dirt cheap. You could get three for 500 pesos, this was before Mexico had devalued the peso to fight inflatio, under a buck for three of ‘em. I went there at least once a week.

What was the inspiration for your market taco?
I moved to Santa Fe directly from Mexico City and fell in love with the surrounding area and the little town of Chimayo, famous for their Santuario with it’s ‘healing dirt’ and the heirloom red chile used to make adovada, a thick, brick-red stew, usually made with pork or beef chuck sold from a stand right behind the church. The stand is called Leona’s also makes awesome adovada-stuffed tamales. When I lived there it really was just rickety stand, I think they cooked out of a house behind the stand. Now I understand it’s become more of a restaurant, but before there wasn’t even a spot to sit down, everything was sold to-go. Back then you had to run a gauntlet past houses with snarling pitbulls chained in the front yards to get to the place.

What’s your favorite taco in SF?
I have a weakness for the fried fish tacos at Nick’ crispy. They remind me of the ones we used to eat post surf in north county San Diego at a bar near the Del Mar race track. I also love Tacos Morenos in Santa Cruz, and La Taqueria, though I usually get a bean and cheese (with avocado and green sauce) burrito there. If you’re every down in Watsonville on a Friday afternoon, you gotta get the sopes at the stand at the farmers market downtown. The potato and green chile ones are awesome.

The "rabbbit-run" taco from Robbie Lewis.

What’s your first taco memory?
There was this place “Casa Bonita” that my family would go to when I was a kid. It was completely cheesy, like a theme park inside with robotic sombero wearing puppet guys and parrots that would pop out of the pseudo-hacienda windows. If I finished my taco meal, the server would give me a “gold doubloon” to go redeem for cheap toy swag at the pirate’s chest. Then I would head back to the table with my booty and proceed to make myself sick, gorging on honey doused sopapillas. Middle-America style good times.

Most memorable taco?

I spent my 30th birthday down in Zihuatanejo. I was down there alone because I was also interviewing for the chef position at a resort down there. It was discovered by the staff that it was my birthday and this amazing older German fellow and his kinda bugged-out artist Mexican wife who also worked at the property, took me around that day in their ancient Beetle. After an hour or so, we wound up out in the dunes at a secluded beachside shack basically, where we sat all afternoon, eating these incredible freshly grilled lobster tacos and drinking ice-cold Pacifico. A surreal day which turned into a surreal night.

What inspired your Tacolicious taco?

I thought about what I habitually cook during this time of the year. What, more often than not, one would find on my menus right now and it seemed that I always would be running some version of a rabbit and fava bean dish: braised rabbit with favas and gnocchi or bacon wrapped rabbit loin on creamy polenta with fava ragout.  That was the springboard for my taco. I just opened up a taqueria at work so I was in the taco headspace and I wanted to respect the roots. I didn’t want to create some franco-mexi Frankenstein taco. I channeled a little Diana Kennedy and came up with a Guajillo chile braised rabbit served with a fava bean, radish and mint salad with some cotija cheese.

Favorite SF taquerias?

I’m a La Taqueria fan. I go there probably once a month. Cheap date spot. The Pancho Villa in San Mateo is pretty kick ass too. Better than the one on 16th in the Mission oddly.

Liza and her tongue taco.

First taco memory?
It was at my home outside of Baltimore, MD. I think I was 7 or 8 the first time my Mom bought the Old El Paso taco kit: It comes with the crunchy taco shells, a packet of beef seasoning, and maybe some other fixings. It was a somewhat ceremonious group effort—you would assemble your own taco with the seasoned ground beef, shredded lettuce, maybe some diced tomatoes with onions, and definitely grated cheddar cheese. What’s more Mexican than that?

Most memorable taco?
Our many staff parties when the El Tonayense taco truck parks outside the restaurant or outside one of Greg [Lindgren's] bars, Rosewood or Rye. They do a crispy tripe taco that is out of this world. Certain staff members have tried to break personal taco-eating records at these parties, with mixed results.

What inspired your market taco?
Doing an A16 taco was a natural fit for us, since week we have Taco Tuesday for staff. One of my sous chefs makes a whole spread with radish salads, several spicy sauces, and whatever meat is on hand. When the wine team is there doing ordering and tastings on Tuesdays, they make sure to arrive hungry. One of our cooks has an amazing braised pig head recipe that he makes every so often (we get a pig and a half in every Wednesday and if we aren’t making coppa di testa, we let him have his way with the head) in the style his mom does back home with achiote, lemon, garlic, onions and tomatoes. It’s so rich and delicious.

What about the tongue?
My other sous chef has recently perfected beef tongue—from the 10-day brine to the braising—it’s really one of the most delicious things we make. Sometimes we serve it cold, sliced on the salumi plate, but when we cube it up and roast it in the wood-fired oven, it gets this crispy outside, tender inside texture that is incredibly sexy. So I knew we would do something with the tongue, because the Tacolicious stand has the griddle and you can achieve that same effect that way.

One of our signature dishes on the menu is our braised cannellini beans that evoke an Italian interpretation of refried pinto beans, made with oregano and garlic. So that was a natural base for the tongue. As for the pickled onions, I can put them on anything. So there you have it. Elements from our menu incorporated into a delicious taco!

Favorite SF taquerias?

I have always really loved the Baja-style pescado taco at Nick’s Crispy Tacos, but I don’t get the taco Nick’s way. I like the soft tortillas, with the tomatillo salsa. I have enjoyed every taco I’ve had at Nopalito, because their handmade tortillas are just so good.  And there’s a soft spot in my heart for the super quesadilla suisa el pastor at El Farollito at 2 am, but I’m sure you hear that a lot.