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)

These days I’m focused on our pending Valencia Street project which has me running such scintillating errands as filing paper work with the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (seriously, it makes me sad to think of the number of trips I’ve made to 77 Stevenson Alley this year) or having things recorded with the County Clerk’s office. While I enjoy the challenge of opening a new business, I have to say, I’ve really missed what I see as the culinary hub of San Francisco, the Ferry Building Farmer’s Market.

I think what I used to like the most about my Thursdays—other, obviously, than the  beautiful produce being sold by knowledgeable and caring farmers amongst the most idyllic scenery one could imagine—was that it gave me the opportunity to check in and catch up with industry friends. It’s always nice to see the big fish. Who wouldn’t want to say hello to Hoss Zare or Laurence Jossel or even Charles Phan. Often Lauren Kiino would walk by, her arms full of market produce, on her way to Il Cane Rosso; she’s always so sweet and soft spoken. And then there’s our awesome co-vendors like Ryan from 4505 Meats or the Lee brothers that own and operate Namu or Richie Nakano from Hapa Ramen. It’s a pretty great scene and as a restaurateur, a pretty awesome place to work.

Rene and Ismael, Two of the Slanted Door's Finest

Yesterday I had the pleasure of seeing Ismael and Rene, two members of the AM service crew at the Slanted Door that have been coming to Tacolicious every Thursday, since Tacolicious opened. It means the world to me that these two eat our tacos and that, for some reason, they haven’t grown tired of us (full disclosure, I’m in the middle of battling Tacolicious taco fatigue). I was free for a couple of hours and I had the great pleasure of spending some time with Kory, our sales manager and his amazing crew of Tacolicious market workers. Not only did the food look and taste terrific, but the tent makeover that Kory has recently spearheaded gave me a huge sense of pride as I know that the little details are being looked after by our wonderful team.

It looks like it’s going to rain through next Thursday, but spring is definitely around the corner. It was great to be at the Market yesterday and the upcoming season ensures many great Thursdays ahead. I for one am making a change to my schedule, I hope to see you there too.

Telmoritos. Available at the Thursday market only.

I’m at work and Joe just dropped off some of Telmo’s pozole soup as well as a bag of his homemade take on a certain famous nacho chip, straight from our Ferry Plaza Farmers Market stand, where they’re for sale every Thursday. (Let’s refer to them “Telmoritos” should there be any legal ramifications and Frito Lay try to sue us.)

I’ll give credit where credit’s due: The idea to do our own take on these famous nacho chips was Mike Harden’s, who you will see is a cheesy guy. He can’t help it. It’s in his Southern blood. At first, we scoffed, but then Telmo—inspired by some organic dried herbs he found—decided to start tinkering.

After some trial and error on Telmo’s part, voila! Welcome to some mighty fine nacho chips. They still get orange powder all over your fingers (this is an essential part of the Telmorito experience), and they have that savory, can’t-stop-eating them cheesy, corny flavor. But unlike the D word, they’re made with our chips from La Palma, don’t have is MSG or transfats—or any of the small type for that matter.

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

Karen Taylor of Primavera's new place in Sonoma

My parents live in Glen Ellen. In the summer,  Sonoma is where I flee from San Francisco’s summer fog. Although this side of the wine country might be more white-bread than the city, it’s hardly lacking in Latin flavor. And Highway 12 is where to find it.

Highway 12, otherwise known as Sonoma Highway, runs through the heart of the town of Sonoma and into Boyes Hot Springs, a part of town where the bodegas (complete with chicken grilling out front) and the fancy Sonoma Mission Inn meet. It’s where you’ll find some great Mexican eating too. Here are some of my picks.

Tortilleria Jalisco 897 W Napa St.
A good flour tortilla is hard to find. More often than not, they’re doughy, pasty things. But the women here make great ones: thin, clearly griddled, no sketchy ingredients, and somehow a layered, lard-texture without the lard. (Not that I’m opposed to lard.) Even before they opened their retail tortilleria, I regularly picked up bags of their tortillas, both flour and corn, to bring home and freeze. The tortilleria also sells tacos and other snacks.

Rancho Viejo, 18976 Highway 12, 707-939-3663
Since it opened in the past year, this cute Yucatecan restaurant has been a welcome addition to Highway 12. Although I haven’t been here yet, the locals (including my parents) enjoy the homecooking, including huaraches, conchinitas pibil and panuchos.

El Molino, 11 Central, phone n/a
Right off 12, this brand-newcomer to Boyes Hot Springs was just opened by Karen Taylor, the owner of the popular Primavera Tamales and the popular Primavera stand at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market. I love her down-home but stylish take on Mexican design including gorgeous tiled floors, great lettering and a corrugated green plastic awning. The Blue Bottle coffee sign and a Porshe Cayenne parked outside, is enough to let you know you’re far from Mexico. My chicken enchilada was just fine, but we tried a tamale with a gorgeous, slightly spicy mole and a delicious, if huge, chicken tinga tostada that comes loaded with beans, crema and lettuce. (As I’ve noticed with Tacolicious, people are apt to balk when a Mexican restaurant using high-quality ingredients goes above the average taqueria price range; I’m sure Taylor gets an earful. But her two-for-one portions match the price.) Sit outside and enjoy the warm day.

La Michoacana, 18495 Highway 12, 707-938-1773
Apparently unrelated to the Michoacana paleta brand you’ll see in all the Mission District bodgeas, this ice cream and popsicle shop is the perfect post-lunch stop for both adults and kids. (From what I understand, the family-run business is one of 10 in the U.S.) The ice cream is very good but I’m all about the paletas because they’re just so beautiful, with slices of whole fruit shining through. Drab in comparison, but very tasty, is the walnut flavor. It’s one of my favorites. And how can you forget the frozen bananas dipped in chocolate and coconut? You can’t.

As Joe puts it about his latest trip there: “As you walk up to the mercado, all the storefronts are open and everyone’s hanging out front and it’s a combination of blaring techo music and mariachi music coming from every which way. It’s really upbeat music but for the most part all the people are standing still. There are trucks driving by with speakers, and kids and women walking with speakers—anything that can move has a speaker—and they’re blaring out their daily specials.”

“There was a minute where I was walking across the street and I got run over by a blind guy and it made me think, What an impossible place to be blind. There’s so much noise pollution. Close your eyes and you can’t hear anything but noise. It brings your stress level up so much. And then, all of the sudden, at 12:15—right when a soccer game between Holland and Mexico began—with the exception of that familiar buzz of the announcer’s voice, there was total silence. It was crazy. It was so, so crazy.”

Joe was down there with his good friend and excellent photographer Tyler Gourley. His images of the market might not show the noise but they definitely show the color.

This is American food.

A town's mercado should be your first stop.

We arrived in San Miguel de Allende, a town that’s known for being both breathtaking—hilly, narrow cobblestone-lined roads, incessant church bells, golden rooftop sunsets, cinematic turns everywhere you look—and, because of this, full of wealthy visitors from Mexico City and a lot of retirees (a.k.a. newfound artists), including many American ex-pats, perched in their 5 million dollar homes. Still, you’d have to be pretty cynical to deny San Miguel its beauty.

Fruits and vegetables abound

Just like a passion fruit.

If you think SMA is too gringo-y for you, it’s because you’re not looking in the right places. “Real” Mexico exists all over this city.

The easiest place to find any country’s soul is in the market. It’s always my first stop. It’s even better if you have an insider and we were lucky to have Paco Cardenas—the owner of a French bakery called El Petit Four (Mesones, #99), and a 12-year resident of San Miguel—take us on a little tour of a pleasantly modest market called Mercado Ignacio Ramire El Nigromante. There, the vendors—mostly women dressed traditionally in the colorful but practical aprons over their dresses—sell everything from nopales to all sorts of handmade tortillas to cheeses, greens, chilies, fresh chickpeas, grilled corn and more. Herbs far beyond cilantro, include rosemary, chamomile, thyme, even lemongrass and a bitter plant Paco said is called rueda, which, combined with chocolate, is used to make a tea to help alleviate headaches. In the fruit stalls, we tasted everything from mangos to Mamey (which strangely tastes like a cooked sweet potato even when it’s fresh) and another fruit akin to a passionfruit.

Corn ready for a squeeze of lime

The biggest myth about Mexican food is that it’s a massive, 10-pound, cheese bomb of an Americanized “El Combo Platter.” In reality, traditional Mexican food is immensely healthful, you just have to visit the market to see what’s being cooked at home. We munched on fresh chickpeas, grilled corn and Oaxaca cheese (a tastier version of our string cheese). One of the most delicious things we ate though, was a tortilla filled with chilies, nopales (high in iron) and quelites—a wild green also known as Lamb’s Quarters, with a mild taste like spinach. (Mariquita Farm grows them and has some recipes here.)

Vegans headed to Gracias Madre, rejoice: Your Mexican food might just be the original.

Painstakingly removing all the thorns from cactus paddles

Potatoes, nopales, chilies and greens—ready for a tortilla

Vegans, rejoice

At the entrance to the mercado in Tequila

My favorite tacos and taco guy: In Tlaquepaque (on Progresso just one block off Juarez)

Tacos and some tight jeans in Tlaquepaque

Taco inspiration.

A little Taco(licious) pride

Not tacos but birria from the Tequila mercado

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.

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.