Nopalito

I will admit straight away that the Bay Area is my favorite place to eat in the USA! I know, I know, I am a new yorker, so what about New York!? Of course New York has some great places to eat, but the Bay Area has a much longer growing season, a greater emphasis on incredible fresh, local ingredients, and the cooking is lighter and cleaner, allowing the flavors of the ingredients to really shine. I like to make the comparison of Bruckner (New York) and Mozart (San Francisco/Bay Area). Bruckner, while exciting, can be loud and bombastic, where Mozart is clean, elegant, and light on its feet.

On a recent trip I went straight from SFO to Nopalito for lunch. This is the second restaurant from the folks who own the very popular Nopa. While Nopa is firmly rooted in the Chez Panisse camp, specializing in organic wood fired "american" cuisine, Nopalito is Mexican with an emphasis on rustic, earthy and bold flavors, cooked by two Mexican chefs from Nopa. Both restaurants use organic, local and sustainable ingredients in their cooking.

To begin, every table receives a little cup of fried and spiced chickpeas. They are addictive and disappear before you know it. We shared several dishes from the lunch menu including the delicious moist tamals, served traditionally in a corn husk. The tamals are made with house made masa from stone ground organic corn. This is a time consuming process, but the results are well worth it. The stewed pork, queso fresco (fresh cheese), chile ancho, chile cascabel and guacamole tamal was packed with flavorful meat. The chiles provided an earthy, deep, ever so slightly spicy accent which balanced well with the moderately salty cheese and cool fresh guacamole.The second tamal was listed as dulce (sweet) and while it was certainly sweeter than the pork tamal, it was not overly sweet. It was made with kabocha and butternut squash, pecans, currants, piloncillo (an unrefined mexican brown sugar) and crema. The nuts added crunch and the buttery squash melded well with the luxurious, soft corn. Both were some the best tamales I have eaten.

Next we shared the Huevos de Caja, poached eggs on corn tortillas with refried beans and a salsa of cilantro and jack cheese. This was a simple but well prepared dish. The house made tortillas added an earthy corn flavor, the eggs were beautifully poached and the delicious beans from Rancho Gordo were smokey and flavorful. The last dish was the blue corn quesadilla with braised greens, poblanos, jack cheese, queso fresco and salsa poblana mulata (salsa of poblano and mulato chile). It was beautifully earthy, and rustic, mostly owing to the hand ground blue corn tortilla.

All the meals here end here with complimentary mexican wedding cookies. These small traditional cookies are made with ground almonds and are in the shape of a dome. The most enticing beverages are the refreshing aguas frescas made with fresh fruit, and the organic almond horchta, a traditional drink made from crushed almonds and rice which are steeped in water, along with sugar and cinnamon. If you prefer to cool the heat with alcohol, several mexican and domestic beers are available on tap and in bottle.

Nopalito
306 Broderick St
San Francisco, CA 94117
415-437-0303
info@nopalitosf.com
Hours: 11:30 am to 10 pm, seven days a week
No reservations