A San Francisco Food Tour
- Lucy and the lens
- Aug 20, 2019
- 5 min read
Updated: Aug 25, 2019
San Francisco is split into a whole bunch of different districts, each one with its own distinct feel, or even their own culture. Chinatown and Little Italy are two of the best known, but for a taste of Latino culture we headed to the Mission District for a food tour run by Secret Food Tours! I actually won a free tour thanks to a competition the company ran on Instagram, and Patrick obviously joined me!
The Mission was officially founded in 1776 when a Spanish priest built the Mission San Francisco de Assis to try to convert the local Yelamu Indians to Christianity. The Indians understandably left and the area became popular with Spanish and Mexicans - lots of the architecture in the area looks like it's been transplanted from Latin America.
Interestingly, to preserve the history of the area, anyone who buys a property here has to maintain the old Latin look of the area: because this would be such a costly project, many of the buildings are falling into disrepair as prices in the city rise. Many of the old theatres, for example, have been abandoned or converted into other things - such as indoor parking lots!!
San Francisco is officially the most expensive city in America, now, and the Mission is suffering from it: our guide revealed that apartments in the area go for around $5,000+ a month, and in one infamous case the owner chose to burn his property down rather than be priced out. Nothing has been built there since, and the expensive apartment blocks beside it now look out over a desolate crater and a mural commemorating people who dedicated their lives to spreading peace:
But one business that is thriving in the Mission District is food! And that's obviously why we were there! We met our guide, Nathan, at 11am outside the Mission Cultural Center for Latin Arts. This centre has a gallery displaying Latin art both historical and modern, and runs community events.
Our first stop was for the famous Mission burrito, a type of burrito that became popular here in the 1960s. It differs from other burritos in that it's more tightly packed and rolled: while most burritos we've ever tried just seem to fall apart in your hands, the burrito we had at Taqueria San Jose stayed in a neat little package until the very end, and it was the most tasty little burrito we've ever had, too! The tender steak falls apart as you bite into it, the pinto beans were a nice touch, and the hot peppers burned my throat as I swallowed!
Between stops, we passed the beautiful mural below, painted to commemorate the now-closed farmer's market that used to be a draw to the area.
We then moved on to a modern-looking Mission Street Oyster Bar, where the options were to try two oysters of your choice, or a bowl of clam chowder with cheesy garlic bread. Most of us opted for the chowder, San Francisco's iconic dish! Having never tried it before, I didn't know what to expect, but it was creamy and delicious and everything I could have hoped for!
At some point in the tour, we can across two murals that nobody messes with. The first was tribute to musician Carlos Santana, who spent his teenage years in the Mission District. There was outrage when it was vandalised with a can of white paint in 2018 and it was quickly repainted.
The second is the Spanish-language tribute to the San Francisco Giants (who we happened to be going to see play the next day...they won, by the way!)
Our third foodie stop was at an El Salvadorean restaurant serving pupusas, flatbreads stuffed with gooey cheese and served with pickled coleslaw and salsa. They were amazing. Panchita's Pupuseria has two locations: the original one is tiny, stuffy and intimate, while the new one is big and air-conditioned! Apparently they have a hard time getting the regulars to move from the little old place and try the new one, so food tours are helping to keep the new place open!!
We found ourselves wandering down Clarion Alley, an alleyway famous for its politically-charged murals. They sometimes rotate, but some of them have been there since the 90s and won't be touched any time soon. There were protest murals - demands to end apartheid, police brutality, mass killings - and there were social commentaries, such as my favourite one showing an army of almost demonic faces staring at mobile phones. Clarion Alley is dirty and dingy, I won't lie, but it's an eye-opening reminder that America isn't always the beautiful!
All Secret Food Tours include a 'secret' stop that isn't listed on their website. The secret stop on our Mission tour had recently been changed, so we found ourselves stopping into an Indian restaurant called Curry Up Now for their samosas, which they're known for. Coming from the English Midlands, a place where you're never more than about 10 minutes from an Indian restaurant, this was the only anticlimax of the tour for me. The previous secret stop sounded like it would have something a bit more exotic for me, but there were Americans on our tour who'd never tried a samosa so I guess it worked for them!
Before heading to our final stop, we passed the Women's Building, a non-profit community space offering arts and education for women of all backgrounds. It's been decorated with beautiful and empowering images of women from top to bottom.
Our final stop of the tour was for dessert. The wonderfully retro Bi-Rite Creamery offered up a cup of tasty salted caramel ice cream. They are also home to the ice-cream stuffed donut! This place was busy so being able to skip the line is an added bonus of a food tour!
Our ice cream was served alongside the most amazing amaretti and pine nut cookies from Dianda's Italian American Bakery. These cookies were so good, we made a special trip on our last day in San Francisco to buy more for the road!
Our final stop was a scenic one: a fairly steep climb up the hills of Mission Dolores Park led to what our guide claimed was the second best view in the city after Twin Peaks. We could see the Latin-style buildings of the Mission give way to the skyscrapers of the financial district, and the water beyond that. Dolores Park borders the Castro, one well-known hub for San Francisco's LGBTQ community, so it had quite a different vibe to the Mission itself! We didn't get to visit the Castro proper but this would be a logical next step after the end of the tour!
Would I recommend this food tour?
Definitely. The Mission can be quite an intimidating area for tourists thanks to its reputation of crime (that's really only limited to a few select areas) so visiting with a guide first made us feel at home. We returned to the area on our last day in the city, and while we seemed to be some of the only tourists there, we received a warm welcome both at Taqueria San Jose and Dianda's bakery when we went back for more burritos and cookies! Because many of the shop fronts have been neglected for financial reasons - to paraphrase our guide, they've been forced to sacrifice the 'cosmetic' upgrades in order to afford to keep serving quality food - as a first time visitor it can be difficult to know which restaurants are actually worth a try, so that's another reason why a guide comes in handy! Finally, it really was fascinating learning about the history of the area - both old and recent - and why things are the way they are now. I would have happily done a similar tour of San Francisco's other districts...if they existed!
Here are some more murals before I go!
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