Bad Mexican food 09.14.2006
I grow increasingly frustrated in my ongoing search for good Mexican food in the Bay Area. I get recommendations from various sources: friends, word of mouth, and restaurant reviews, but it's all for naught. Each bad experience somehow tops the previous one while simultaneously wasting my money, time, and effort and straining my sources' credibility.
This week, I came across a San Francisco Chronicle article on the best burrito places in the Bay Area. The writer, Bill Addison, used fanciful prose like 'gluttonous thrills', 'cylindrical god', and 'burbling murmurs of astonishment and appreciation' to describe his journeys around various peninsula eateries. With that spirit in mind, i'll review one of his top picks which I had the misfortune of visiting this week.
RESTAURANT: Sancho's Taqueria
ADDRESS: 3205 Oak Knoll Drive, Redwood City, CA. 94062
BURRITO: regular carnitas:
carnitas (braised pork)
pinto beans
Mexican rice
salsa
Sancho's is a little hole in the wall located in a half-demolished strip mall in the middle of residential Redwood City. This part of town is white trash snobby. Architecturally anything goes: Alpine lodge next to a shanty with a widow's walk next to a southwestern adobe fortress. On the street corners are condescending traffic signs with messages like 'What part of 25 MPH don't you understand?' and 'Today may be the day that your speed kills a child'. We're off to a good start.
According to Sancho's owner, Adam Torres, 'I owned a taqueria in Mountain View in 1998 during the dot-com boom.. but I didn't really know much about food. Now I know what's going on in the kitchen... I personally watch over the food, taste everything every day, and show my staff what makes food taste good.'
I ordered the regular carnitas burrito which appealed to me due to its lack of cheese. It's nice not to have to stand there and explain 'sin queso' over and over with my broken Spanish when 99% of the time the people behind the counter either don't understand me, ignore me, or just don't believe me.
Those of you that know me know that I have certain rituals I perform with burritos. The first order of business is to cut the burrito in half. This gives you a quick lay of the land and lets you know exactly what you're dealing with. Even at places I implicitly trust, i'm impressed by people who can just dive right into a burrito without knowing the state of its contents. If the cross section doesn't provide enough info, a follow-up longitudinal cut usually does the trick.
My first incision revealed perhaps one of the most complex, gigantic funny bits i've ever seen in my life: a flat strip of tendon connecting together two knots of gristle and fat. I pulled the piece of 'meat' back from the rest of the burrito which extricated a connected procession of other questionable pieces out behind it in a chain. What was left was a rice and bean burrito with a perfect glistening impression of the offending ingredients slowly collapsing in on itself. I performed a similar operation on the other half of the burrito which uncovered even more of the mangy gray, gristly stew meat. Most of it was covered with a thin layer of cloudy membrane which is usually removed during the preperation phase. The burrito carcass stunk so badly of grease that I had to throw the whole thing out in a different part of my office.
This photo doesn't really do the appalling burrito justice, but it does kind of look like a skinned knee after a bike accident.
I had a quick glimpse at Sancho's famous fish tacos on my way out of the 'restaurant'. They looked like Mrs. Pauls fish filets with nacho cheese sauce on them.
In Bill Addison's lie-filled article, he has this quote from a fellow food critic in reference to the 'famed' San Francisco style burrito:
'It's basically the No. 2 plate at a Mexican restaurant rolled into a flour tortilla,' quips Jonathan Gold, food critic at L.A. Weekly and a former restaurant critic for Gourmet magazine. 'But you wouldn't believe how many letters I get from readers asking where to find San Francisco-style burritos in L.A.'
Well, allow me to 'quip' here about the San Francisco-style burrito. THEY SUCK! I can only assume that the only reason they're popular is because they're big and cheap and most of you are drunk or high when you eat them. Hell, i'd even take a Roberto's carne asada out-of-a-can burrito over anything i've eaten up here so far. Perhaps the further away you get from Mexico, the worse the Mexican food gets?
That being said, my challenge to find a good Mexican food place in the Bay Area still stands. If I find one, i'll publicly apologize, but in this case, my rating is F-
This week, I came across a San Francisco Chronicle article on the best burrito places in the Bay Area. The writer, Bill Addison, used fanciful prose like 'gluttonous thrills', 'cylindrical god', and 'burbling murmurs of astonishment and appreciation' to describe his journeys around various peninsula eateries. With that spirit in mind, i'll review one of his top picks which I had the misfortune of visiting this week.
RESTAURANT: Sancho's Taqueria
ADDRESS: 3205 Oak Knoll Drive, Redwood City, CA. 94062
BURRITO: regular carnitas:
Sancho's is a little hole in the wall located in a half-demolished strip mall in the middle of residential Redwood City. This part of town is white trash snobby. Architecturally anything goes: Alpine lodge next to a shanty with a widow's walk next to a southwestern adobe fortress. On the street corners are condescending traffic signs with messages like 'What part of 25 MPH don't you understand?' and 'Today may be the day that your speed kills a child'. We're off to a good start.
According to Sancho's owner, Adam Torres, 'I owned a taqueria in Mountain View in 1998 during the dot-com boom.. but I didn't really know much about food. Now I know what's going on in the kitchen... I personally watch over the food, taste everything every day, and show my staff what makes food taste good.'
I ordered the regular carnitas burrito which appealed to me due to its lack of cheese. It's nice not to have to stand there and explain 'sin queso' over and over with my broken Spanish when 99% of the time the people behind the counter either don't understand me, ignore me, or just don't believe me.
Those of you that know me know that I have certain rituals I perform with burritos. The first order of business is to cut the burrito in half. This gives you a quick lay of the land and lets you know exactly what you're dealing with. Even at places I implicitly trust, i'm impressed by people who can just dive right into a burrito without knowing the state of its contents. If the cross section doesn't provide enough info, a follow-up longitudinal cut usually does the trick.
My first incision revealed perhaps one of the most complex, gigantic funny bits i've ever seen in my life: a flat strip of tendon connecting together two knots of gristle and fat. I pulled the piece of 'meat' back from the rest of the burrito which extricated a connected procession of other questionable pieces out behind it in a chain. What was left was a rice and bean burrito with a perfect glistening impression of the offending ingredients slowly collapsing in on itself. I performed a similar operation on the other half of the burrito which uncovered even more of the mangy gray, gristly stew meat. Most of it was covered with a thin layer of cloudy membrane which is usually removed during the preperation phase. The burrito carcass stunk so badly of grease that I had to throw the whole thing out in a different part of my office.
This photo doesn't really do the appalling burrito justice, but it does kind of look like a skinned knee after a bike accident.
I had a quick glimpse at Sancho's famous fish tacos on my way out of the 'restaurant'. They looked like Mrs. Pauls fish filets with nacho cheese sauce on them.
In Bill Addison's lie-filled article, he has this quote from a fellow food critic in reference to the 'famed' San Francisco style burrito:
'It's basically the No. 2 plate at a Mexican restaurant rolled into a flour tortilla,' quips Jonathan Gold, food critic at L.A. Weekly and a former restaurant critic for Gourmet magazine. 'But you wouldn't believe how many letters I get from readers asking where to find San Francisco-style burritos in L.A.'
Well, allow me to 'quip' here about the San Francisco-style burrito. THEY SUCK! I can only assume that the only reason they're popular is because they're big and cheap and most of you are drunk or high when you eat them. Hell, i'd even take a Roberto's carne asada out-of-a-can burrito over anything i've eaten up here so far. Perhaps the further away you get from Mexico, the worse the Mexican food gets?
That being said, my challenge to find a good Mexican food place in the Bay Area still stands. If I find one, i'll publicly apologize, but in this case, my rating is F-
posted by weezie at
8:00 PM
4 Comments:
i dont live in the bay area any more, so i don't know if these guys are still around or not, but if they are, you should check out EL TORO LOCO in pacifica. i sampled burritos all over the bay area and el toro blew them all away. even their veggie burritos were amazing. happy eating...
i know this is an old post but i found it when i was looking for pics of those condescending signs, which incidentally are all over redwood city, and if you want to get really technical that shitty taqueria is in emerald hills, not rwc
also i cant believe you cant find a good taqueria in the san francisco bay area. i hope you found one by now because theres thousands. you want a real challenge, go to washington state and find a decent burrito. you won't.
You sound a little neurotic. You cut open and inspect every burrito? No wonder you don't find anything you like. After plenty of experience eating burritos of various styles in San Francisco as well as LA and San Diego, I still find that most of my favorites are in SF.
I'll agree that quite a few of the San Francisco style taquerias are pretty mediocre, but there are at least just as many that are amazingly good. You have to know how to get them too though. Not too much rice, or none at all, and no lettuce. Also, skip the guacamole unless you know it's good, because it sucks at some places. Finally, make sure it's full of hot sauce and cilantro. Yeahhhh.......
Also you argue that mexican food must get worse the farther it gets from mexico, but think about it for a second...SF may be farther from Mexico than San Diego or something, but there are tons of mexicans living in SF (as well as other hispanic people), and we have some of the freshest produce available to us up here. There's no reason why it would get worse, unless it's just the style you're not too fond of, or you constantly eat at horrible restaurants.
Also, instead of saying "sin queso" in broken spanish, why don't you just say "no cheese." Believe it or not, but you probably will get better results.
Yep, I'm admittedly a little neurotic, but I've had a lot of bad experiences and my habits have spared me the indignity of eating all sorts of things that would horrify most people.
As far as the Mexican food and the large population of Mexicans up here in the Bay Area, I stand by my original statement, but also offer a qualifier. I think the further you get away from the California / Mexico border, the further you get away from my preferred style of Mexican food which is Baja Peninsula style. I've also yet to find anything comparable to the fantastic seafood I had in Acapulco.
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