Papalote

There are two of these in San Francisco, one in the Mission District and the other in Western Addition (just north of The Haight). I was staying with a friend in The Haight so I walked over to the one closest to me for lunch one day. If you look at the menu it doesn’t look too different than the normal burrito shop. Various burritos or tacos with carne asada, chicken, pork, some seafood ones, etc. They do have some mole dishes as well.

It differentiates itself in two main ways though:
1) All the meat is cooked freshly for you. No pre-cooked bins of stuff that you have no idea how long has been sitting there getting stale. So if you order a carne asada burrito, they pull out a raw piece of steak from the fridge and put in on a real flame grill, char it up quite nicely, and then chop it up for your burrito/taco.
2) The have very interesting vegetarian options. From a Soy-rizo (soy-based chorizo) to tofu marinated in achiote and two kinds of vegetable fillings. They have many more options for fillings if you are vegetarian.

On top of that, they have a fantastic house made roasted tomato salsa. Its absolutely delicious. I think it would be better with a bit more heat, but regardless, its a fantastic salsa.

They have some interesting fillings like grilled prawn and chicken mole, but I opted for something more standard so I could have a good baseline against what I have had before. I got two carne asada soft taco’s with a bit of pico de gallo.

The only thing I was disappointed by was the watermelon agua fresca I got to drink. It was kind of watery and just wasn’t very watermelon like. It was probably not really a fault of theirs because its so late in the season. I don’t suppose expecting fantastic watermelon in early November is a normal expectation, but just 2 weeks before I had much better watermelon agua fresca at the fields in Red Hook, Brooklyn.

Still, its a taqueria.. and the taco was good. Enough said…

Papalote
(415) 776-0106
1777 Fulton Street (at Masonic)
San Francisco 94117