San Francisco

I’m going to take a departure from New York in this blog (which feels a little sacrilegious to its name) as I’m just back from a week in San Francisco, and holiday food is always the best food! Despite that, I didn’t particularly have anything I was desperate to try there; unlike New York which has so many iconic must-trys (hot dogs, pizza, bagels…) I wasn’t aware of anything specific to San Francisco. Instead, I open-mindedly and greedily made my way around well-rated places and well known neighbourhoods in search of anything delicious. Here’s a snapshot…

Mexican

While I wasn’t planning to try any one specific thing, I had high hopes for the Mexican food in San Francisco. More widely than the Bay Area, California has always had close associations with Mexico; the area became part of Mexico after independence from Spain in 1821, until the - wonderfully named - Bear Flag Revolt in 1846 when it was very briefly its own republic (the same flag with a bear and “California republic” emblazoned on it still flies all over SF). While I would more closely associate southern California with Mexican food (especially LA) around 7% of San Francisco’s population is of Mexican ancestry (with a fifth of these having been born in Mexico) and it has a couple of famous Hispanic areas, notably the Mission District, which is the birthplace of Mission Burritos.

While there were a plethora of options, we did lots of big day trips so favoured places closer to our hotel in Nob Hill (short for “Noble Hill” apparently… they should have just left it at that). We headed to nearby Matador, which is a taqueria and sat at the bar. The vibe was brilliant, with lots of people coming in by themselves to have a few tacos and a beer at the end of long days (presumably doing something techy!) I ordered the esquite as an appetiser, which is like a Mexican corn salad, that was topped with crema Mexicana, questo cotija (a hard, cow’s milk cheese), chile and lime juice. This was absolutely delicious – I’ve only ever seen versions on the actual corn cob before, but this was a bit easier to scoff down with tortilla chips and some cocktails. And speaking of… I wrapped up the evening with a spicy margarita, which was one of the tastiest cocktails I’ve ever had, made with tequila, muddled jalapeno and cucumber, with spicy and sweet salt on the rim. To this untrained-in-tequila palate it tasted a bit like a Mexican version of a bloody Mary – it left your lips tingling in the same deliciously spicy way. Despite having an extensive mix-and-match taco menu we found our tacos underwhelming. I had: (1) cauliflower adobo with refried beans, red cabbage, queso fresco and cilantro; (2) rock cod with pico de gallo with ancho chilli aioli, pineapple and tomatillo salsa; and (3) the signature Matador taco with slow-cooked beef brisket, mango salsa, and apple and onion slaw. The best Mexican food I’ve had melds all the flavours together so well that it all just tastes more than the sum of its parts whereas with these you could just taste each flavour individually. The funnest bit was trying to eat each one gracefully in front of the bartender.

Chinese

Despite the strong associations with both Mexican and Spanish cultures, the largest minority ethnic group in the city are actually the Chinese, who made up 21% of the population as of 2010. In fact, San Francisco’s Chinatown is actually the oldest in North America and is the biggest Chinese population outside of Asia (it also apparently attracts more tourists each year than the Golden Gate Bridge, but I don’t really understand how you’d measure that…) As with most other San Franciscans, Chinese immigrants began arriving around the time of the gold rush in 1849 (before which San Francisco was a tiny town of around 1,000 people), when they were employed in huge numbers by companies looking for cheap labour, most notably on the expanding railroads at the time that connected the blossoming Pacific coast with other parts of the US. It probably goes without saying that they weren’t treated well and America’s 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act was apparently the first immigration restriction law aimed at a specific group; lots of Chinese immigrants were detained for long periods of time on Angel Island in San Francisco (which we also visited, and which has an immigration museum dedicated to this period).

Walking around San Francisco’s Chinatown felt very authentic; the parts I saw haven’t succumbed to tourism and still very much feel part of daily life for the people there. This was summed up in our dim sum lunch at Lai Hong Lounge, which was full of ethnically Chinese locals (or at least that was my impression): always a good sign. I ordered what transpired to be enough to feed about six people: baked pork buns, salt and pepper chicken wings, fried rice with peanuts, turnip cake with XO sauce, and a steamed dumpling sampler that included shrimp, curry beef, spinach and mushroom dumplings. I was looking forward to the one sweet, custard dumpling that was meant to look like piglet but it actually looked like a cloud with a pink blob on it… still a nice way to round off the feast. My favourites were definitely the dumplings, smothered in chilli sauces from the middle of the table. Everything was delicious but also huge (it was much more generous than dim sum places I’ve been to in London). It totalled around $40 for everything and we had so much that we filled boxes with leftovers and left them outside for the huge homeless population in the city (something that a local tour guide told us is good practice here… and when we walked past about 10 minutes later it was already gone).

Yemeni

Our most surprising food discovery of the trip was closest to home; in the hotel we stayed at - Hotel Carlton - there was a Yemeni restaurant called Saha’s and we had vouchers that gave us some money off as hotel guests (in a city as expensive as San Francisco that’s particularly appealing!) For this reason we ended up eating here multiple times (something I don’t normally do on holidays, so greedy am I to try as many different things as possible) and it was an absolute revelation. I couldn’t find out very much about Yemeni immigration to San Francisco or even the country in general, beyond the fact that there are estimated to be up to 50,000 Yemeni immigrants in the States as a whole, and a notable population in Oakland California, which isn’t too far away from SF. I also haven’t been able to find out much about Yemeni food in general, so it’s hard to say how indicative it was of the country’s food (the restaurant’s  website says it’s “Yemen-influenced”) but it was probably some of the best food I’ve had in the US so it’s worth sharing.

One of the best things I tried was the ‘Yemeni breakfast’ which was like a thick puree/stew of fava beans, with salsa, poached eggs and homemade toast. Apparently fava beans are used a lot in Yemeni cuisine, so I was sad that they also seemed to be out of the fava bean eggs benedict, which sounded epic. There were also some amazing dinner options; one of the most interesting was stuffed beetroots (or just “beets” here) with marzipan(!), jalapeno, za’atar, vegan cream cheese and a herby sauce. I’ve never heard of any combination like that before but it was just delicious. Equally interesting was the savoury phyllo baklava filled with salmon, mustard, almonds and honey, and served with a black olive tapenade. Another combination I’ve never heard about before, but completely delicious. There were lots of flatbread options too; my husband had a version for breakfast with spinach and fried eggs, and we also shared one at dinner that was topped with cubed lamb, pine nuts, sumac and baba ghanoush. Less surprising than the other things but still super tasty. I think a lot of the unusual combinations were straight from the chef’s head as a look at other Yemeni restaurant menus suggests slightly more familiar offerings, but it definitely piqued my interest enough for me to have found out that there’s a Yemeni restaurant half an hour’s walk away from us here in Brooklyn… which may come in handy.

I’ve managed to witter on about so much food and this is without even delving into our Sonoma and Napa Valley wine tour, delicious local seafood dishes in Fisherman’s Wharf, New Orleans style soul food, Southern US / Mediterranean fusion meal, San Francisco Brewing Co. trip, or visit to the famous Ghirardelli’s chocolate shop… Maybe for another time…  But hopefully it goes without saying that I would hugely recommend San Francisco to anyone considering it (it’s almost as good as New York).