Our second annual Hecho en SF event is around the corner. For this fundraiser, we bring together some of the best Mexican food and drink purveyors in the city and donate all the proceeds to CUESA (Center for Urban Education About Sustainable Agriculture)—the organization that runs the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market—and La Cocina, our Mission District friends and kitchen incubator for culinary entrepreneurs.

That’s the noble side of it. The real truth is, between the prehispanic bug snacks (yes, I’m talking insects) from Don Bugito and the tacos from Tacolicious (wrapped in warm, made-to-order corn tortillas from La Palma), some great cocktails and much more, it’s just a grand ole time. We hope to see you there!

Tickets are $55 a person. Buy them here.

TACOLICIOUS @ THE RESTAURANT . SAN MIGUEL DE ALLENDE . MEXICO . MARCH 22ND 2012 from TYLER GOURLEY on Vimeo.

Our good friend and photographer put together this great video of the makings of the Tacolicious restaurant pop-up last week in San Miguel de Allende at our friend Donnie Masterson’s wondering dining establishment, The Restaurant. Click on the link to see the video. I’m not smart enough (nor is Joe) to actually embed the video. I keep trying and it’s not working.

Need to know something about tequila or mezcal? Eric's your man.

Eric Giardina is Mosto’s newest team member and without a doubt its biggest agave nerd. Before he came to us, he spent two years as the ambassador for Fortaleza tequila. He’s the kind of guy that walks around with a rustic ceramic copita in his pocket just in case someone’s pouring the mezcal. If he could, he would sing about mezcal like this guy.

Though, who’s to say he can’t?

You’ll have to find out tomorrow night. March 26, from 7 to 9 pm, Eric will be leading a seminar about the very special, limited edition Del Maguey Espadin mezcal. The cost is $60 for the tasting and talk; $25 of this will be donated to TIP (Tequila Interchange Project), a non-profit consumer advocacy group for tequila.

But before you sign up for the class (to do so, email him at egiardina@sbcglobal.net), I wanted you to know Eric just a tiny bit more. So I asked him a few burning questions.

What’s your first memory of tequila?
Oklahoma, 7th grade. Cuervo and coronas.

What percentage of people still think of tequila as something that you shoot with salt and lime?
Fifty-fifty.

What and where was your tequila a-ha moment?
I had a 100 percent agave margarita at Mad in Roseville. It was made with lime, agave, Zapopan tequila. It changed my life.

Are you a blanco, reposado or añejo guy?
Blanco—that’s how tequila comes out of the still.

If you have to drink a agave-spirit based cocktail, what’s your poison?
Coffee and mezcal.

If you had to be a tequila which one would you be and why?
I’d be Tobala—little and wild.

What are you most fired up about right now?
The entire Del Maguey line of mezcal. Ron [Cooper] is my hero.

What are you going to put in your jar on the ceiling of Mosto?
A copita.

Mission High School

Public schools are important to us. My mom was a public school teacher and my dad’s still working as a professor at Sonoma State. Joe and I send our kids to San Francisco Community in the Excelsior. In fact, most of our close friends here in San Francisco send their kids to public school. Should anyone ever tell you the city has terrible public education and you must flee to Marin, let me speak to them. We’ve had some wonderful experiences here.

However—and this is not a news flash—public schools are terribly underfunded. When our sons’ teachers send home notes asking for things like erasers, Kleenex, glue sticks and other supplies for the classroom, it’s a stark reminder that our city’s school system is in desperately in need of things much more basic than the organic garden that we’re always looking for help with too. Carrots are nice, but pencils are necessary. When the kids have furlough days, it’s clear that things are need to be fixed. (Though, as the boys are watching Sponge Bob at 10 am on a Friday, I think they’d disagree wholeheartedly with this).

All of this is to say that Joe and I have decided to make public school and education our focus at Tacolicious. At the Valencia Street location, we’re starting to partner with Mission High School—which seems like a natural fit considering our Paul Madonna mural is a constant reminder of this high school’s beauty. At the Chestnut Street location, we’re partnering with buildOn which runs great afterschool programs, not to mention takes kids to build schools all over the world.

But all you really need to remember is this: Starting in March, every month Tacolicious will give 15 percent of its Monday proceeds to a public school in the neighborhood. This means lunch and dinner. Look at it this way—since we’re essentially open from 11:30 to midnight (Chestnut closes an hour earlier), there  are over 12 hours in the day for you to eat a taco and make a difference. Or get drunk off tequila and not be filled with self loathing. It’s also a perfect time to bring in the kids. Our kids menu is $7 for an agua fresca, beans and rice, a choice of taco, and a sundae. Dieters can come in for the Marina Girl Salad. There’s something for everyone, but particularly the schools.

Here’s the breakdown as to what schools are the beneficiaries for the spring. We’ll start up again in the fall.

We hope you’ll come by and forward this post to other public school supporters.

Tacolicious School Project
SPRING SESSION, 2012

Valencia Street location
• March, Mission High School
• April, San Francisco Community
• May, Buena Vista Horace Mann

Chestnut Street Location
March, April, and May:
Galileo Academy of Science and Technology and its buildOn afterschool program

Nice hat, Tim!

It’s old news by now, but a couple weeks ago, Giants pitcher Tim “The Freak” Lincecum talked up Tacolicious in an interview on Bay Area Sports Guy. No, we didn’t pay him to tell the world he eats at Tacolicious—while showing off a Tacolicious baseball cap that he turned out to be wearing under his hoodie (would capital letters in boldface demonstrate our excitement about this more properly?)—but now we’re fully aware of the power of the celebrity endorsement. It’s big. It’s awesome. Check out minute 3:53 and 4:51 on this YouTube video.

Tim continued to show some T-lish pride at the Giants FanFest, pictured above.

This is all pretty great, but the back story is even better: Tim is indeed a regular at our Chestnut Street location, along with some other members of the Giants. And no one is a bigger Giants fan than Mike Barrow, our director of operations. Mike is the kind of shy, incredibly polite, Irish looking guy you’ll see circulating around both our restaurants, making sure things are perfect.

One day, Tim was in to eat with some of the other Giants and Mike made the bold move to present him with one of our Tacolicious caps—it being the right black-and-orange color combo, after all. Tim, who’s a really nice guy, thanked Mike effusively for this gift, which in turn caused Mike to run straight up to the office where Telmo was working.

“Telmo!” Mike exclaimed, as lore has it. “Tim Lincecum just fisted me!”
To which Telmo—clearing his throat, trying not to choke—replied, ”Um, Mike? It’s fist bumped.”

Silly old semantics.

In other YouTube news, these girls below have made a video entitled “Tacolicious” and it really made my day. From the looks of it they’re in LA and don’t even know who we are. They’re riffing off the word as its described here in the Urban Dictionary (the Walmart quote is my personal favorite). It’s really just a whole different kind of endorsement—a slightly raunchy, if highly entertaining, one. Takin’ back the video ho, ladies. Good job.