Mission Street Food

I know I have mentioned this before, but one of the best things about living in San Francisco is the abundant supply of excellent food. But even more exciting than the good food is the truly innovative atmosphere for making, serving, and eating food. On Saturday, I experienced one such innovation that I have a hard time imagining in any other city than San Francisco. 

A few months back, a line cook at Bar Tartine in the Mission decided he wanted to use his one night off to experiment in a new kind of restauranting. He noticed that a food cart was going unused on Thursday nights. So, he set out to rent the cart for the night and serve gourmet food at rock bottom prices to anyone who wanted it. He expected a small group of people, but was surprised to sell out of food long before the customers ran out. This continued to happen every week, until he decided he needed to expand. He found a Chinese restaurant in the Mission willing to let him use the restaurant and part of the kitchen to prepare the food. It is such an interesting story and a unique experience in eating.

I found out about Mission Street Food through the Eater SF blog and immediately wanted to see this for myself. On Saturday I finally got the chance to go and took my visiting Mom and Aunt to experience something only found in San Francisco. To put it simply, it was an amazing experience.

We showed up at 5:40 PM to get in line and there were already about 20-25 people in front of us. We were fortunate to get seated in the first wave of diners, so we ate early, but didn't have to wait long (wait times can be measured in hours if you're not in the first wave, which I recommend you trying to do). 

The food was spectacular. We had a snap pea salad, king trumpet mushrooms, and a ham and cheese sandwich, all spectacular. On came shrimp and grits with homemade sausage, which tasted so good, if I had been standing, my knees would have buckled. Next was a grass fed steak. And finally for dessert, we had butter-fried cornbread with whipped creme fraiche and blackberries and seriously, it was so freakin good that I wanted to lick the plate. I recommend bring a bottle of wine with you (only a $5 corkage fee). All of this was less than $60 for three people - such a deal! And to top it all off, the profits go to charity. 

For more background on Mission Street Food, read this article from the Chronicle. And to check the menu for each Thursday and Saturday night dinner, check out the Mission Street Food blog. And of course, reviews on Yelp.