On a 'Mission'

So the Mission reminds me quite a bit of my favourite Sydney suburb, Marrickville. During the 1940-1960's big numbers of Mexican immigrants moved to the area, bringing with them their culture and food. You can walk whole blocks around the Mission and only hear Spanish spoken by those around you. Then, in the 1990's the hipsters moved in and now the area is a mixture of the old and the new.

The food here is awesome. I think, like me, most Australians encounters with Mexican food growing up were Old El Paso tacos and corn chips and salsa. In the last few years more Mexican has been popping up around Sydney and I've tried a few, but haven't been overly impressed.

My last trip to San Francisco I ate at Mijita in the Ferry Building. Mijita is a little more fancy than your average Mexican restaurant that you would find in the Mission. The chef, Traci Des Jardins, is a James Beard Award-Winner. Here, I was introduced to the concept that tacos was a soft corn tortilla with filling, not a giant 'U' shaped corn chip. The meat came from a larger cut that had been seasoned and slow cooked and was so tender it just fell apart. On my 'Taco de Carnitas' toppings were a simple (fresh) salsa, coriander and onions. No ground meat, sour cream or grated cheese. Totally delicious.

Since this trip to San Francisco I was going to be living in the Mission, armed with my Zagat guide, google and new friends willing to share their experiences, I was going to find the best the Mission had to offer.

My first stop on what I have labelled the 'Taco Tour' is La Taqueria. This joint gets the highest Zagat rating with "killer burritos" and "extraordinary" tacos.

I ordered the taco carnitas (pork), chips with salsa and strawberry fresca.

The taco comes is pork, beans and salsa wrapped in 2 soft tortillas.

The chips and salsa are thick corn chips (the corn chips over here are about double the thickness of the ones we get from a bag back home) covered in a fresh salsa of tomato, onion, coriander and a bit of lime juice. I didn't even eat get through half of this since the taco was a pretty good size (apparently most people eat a few of these, I'm not quite sure how they do it).

Now, I'm not one to get super excited about drinks (especially non-alcoholic ones), but the strawberry fresca was awesome. I'm not quite sure what it is, but I think it must be a basic sugar syrup with strawberries blended into it, but left quite chunky.

I enjoyed it so much I marched myself to Borders the very next day and sat in front of the Mexican cookbook section for some time looking through them all. I left with a book that I hope will help my do something similar back home.