Tanguito

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After happily discovering Salty's Famous Fishwich in Fisherman's Whaf Pier 39 area (see post HERE), I'm not as put off by the touristy area when looking for food finds.  I've passed by Tanguito when eating next door at the Codmother Fish and Chips (see post HERE) and its whaffing smell of fantastic bbq meats made me swear to myself that I would come back here.  Living in the city, getting to experience a real bbq is not very common, but the freshly grilled meats and the outside seating makes this girl feel like its really summer.

This stationary food truck churns out Argentinian food that is irresistible.  I've had some disappointing empanadas (El Porteno - see post HERE; Venga - see post HERE) and Argentinian food at Lolinda (see post HERE).  When I think of Argentinian food, I think juicy, flavorful platter of grilled meats.  There is nothing fancy about Tanguito.  No hipster decorations or fancy drinks, just slabs of good meat and flaky empanadas.       

The outer shell of the empanadas here are absolutely fantastic.  They have a thin flakiness to them and when cracking it open is like opening a pinata with even more surprises within.

Bits of salty ham and generous melted cheese make this one of the best empanadas I've had in the city. 

The beef empanada is one of the standard Argentinian empanadas and this one does not disappoint. While I prefer the ham and cheese over this one, the ground beef is juicy and flavorful.

The saffron rice comes as a platter with your choice of meats or as a side dish.  Each kernel of rice is so distinct and flavorful.  Mixed with peppers, onions, mushrooms and topped with a fried plantain, its a nice carb option to this protein centric meal.

Now onto the main event... the meat platter (parrillada).  A combination of almost every type of popular meat you can think of: chicken, Italian sausage, shortrib, tri tip, filet minon.  Each meat was seasoned so well with just herbs and some salt.  Nothing fancy, but so good.  Every piece of meat, even the chicken was juicy, so much so that a couple pieces squirted out juicy when cut.  This meat platter is no joke, its sharable and feeds about three people.  The meat here is just awesome, I can't even describe it in words. 

For an additional $4, you can get a grilled blood sausage.  Usually I find blood sausage to be a little too iron tasting for me, but this one was stuffed with tons of spices and herb.  So good.

   

Address:                 Tanguito
                                2850 Jones St.
                                 San Francisco, CA    

 

Type:                        Argentinian

Popular chomps:       saffron rice
                                   empanadas
                                   skirt steak
                                   burger
                                   choripan
                                   parrillada

Chomp worthy:          saffron rice
                                    empanadas
                                    parrillada      

El Sur

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Empanadas seem to be one of the "in" food items this year. Not exactly an expert, but I've put away a good amount of them recently to make a legitimate comparison - Lolinda (see post HERE), Venga (see post HERE), El Porteno Empanadas (see post HERE).  Venga and El Porteno were both disappointing, but Lolinda's corn empanadas are the best of the bunch until now.

 The combo gives you a choice of two empanadas and a side salad, but the salad is nothing special and I suggest skipping it and heading straight for the empanadas.  El Sur has a variety of empanadas:  Traditional, pollo saltado, parisien, verde, and championes.  The traditional (beef) and pollo saltado (chicken) were wrapped in the common half moon shape.

The champinones (mushroom) and parisien (ham) were wrapped in a bun shape.

 The wrapper was perfectly flaky with just the right about of butter.  The traditional is made with hand cut beef, onions, pimenton, hard boiled egg, olive, and oregano.  Although the beef was tender and juicy, I didn't find this empanada that exciting.

The insides of all the empanadas were juicy and flavorful, even the chicken one, which I find tends to be one of the drier meats in most dishes.  The pollo saltado is made with sauteed chicken, onions, tomatoes, hard boiled egg, and olives.

Parisian empanadas from El Sur Truck

The championes (mushroom) was one of two of my favorites during this meal.  The Parisien (right) was the other.  Usually I stay away from ham because it tends to be overly salty in most cases, but the chopped prosciutto and country ham just oozed flavor.

updated - Working my way through the 2013 7x7's SF big eat 100 things

Address:                  El Sur
                                 various locations
                                 San Francisco, CA 
 

Type:                        Argentinian

Popular chomps:      parisian
                                 traditional
                                 pollo
                                 champiñones (mushroom)

Chomp worthy:        parisian
                                 champiñones (mushroom)      

El Porteno Empanadas

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El Porteno Empanadas is a little hard to find in the Ferry Building.  Its located along one of the doors that face Market St.  They serve up both savory and sweet Argentinian empanadas.  I've eaten enough empanadas to know that not every empanadas is alike.  Every country and region makes these pastry pockets a little differently.  Also, as with all things sold in San Francisco and especially the Ferry Building, the ingredients are organic, farm fresh, and locally sourced.

The carne empanada is stuffed with Prather Ranch organic dry aged grass fed beef, raisins, pimiento stuffed olives, and hard boiled eggs.  I was really hoping for a flaky, buttery pastry, but I was pretty disappointed to find a limp, tasteless outer shell.  The beef is so stuffed in the empanada it practically explodes out from the first bite.  Too bad its bland and if I didn't read the ingredients I would have never known there was pimiento stuffed olives in there.  Also, I wasn't a huge fan of the raisins.

More raisins!  Raisins, chicken, chicken chorizo, and olives were stuffed inside the pollo empanada.  Its a tie between which was worse:  this one or the carne.

Same tasteless crust as the rest of the empanadas, but the mushroom stuffing was probably the best of three.  The locally picked organic mushrooms gave a nice, earthy flavor with a slight crunch.  Other ingredients include shallots, parmesan cheese, and creme fraiche, but all I could really taste was the mushroom, which wasn't a bad thing. 

I had some pretty tasty alfajores at Lolinda (see post HERE) so I was excited to see them sold at El Porteno.  Besides the traditional dulce de leche, they offer lemon and a housemade quince paste.  I decided to stick with the classic dulce de leche, but was pretty unimpressed with the too crumbly and too sweet cookie.

Address:                   El Porteno Empanadas
                                  1 Ferry Plaza
                                  San Francisco, CA
 

Type:                         Argentine/Latin

Popular chomps:      chapinones
                                  pollo (chicken)
                                  carne (beef)
                                  humita

Chomp worthy:         nothing

Lolinda

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 Now occupying the old Medjool space is Lolinda, the newest addition to the Beretta family.  Rather than their usual Italian and pizza ventures, Lolinda takes a step into Argentinian cuisine.  With only a handful of Argentinian restaurants in the Bay Area, when I think of Argentinian cuisine I think steak and empanadas.  Lolinda had plenty of both.

Normally I tend to go with some type of meat, cheese, or a mixture of both when I choose an empanada, but raves about their empanada de maiz (corn) swayed my usual decision. 

The outside of the empanada was perfectly fried without the slightest bit of greasiness.  Inside the crisp exterior was a hot, oozing corn filling with whole kernels of sweet corn.  It was delicious and I'm glad I ended up ordering this.

A bone marrow dish, of course!  I was a little disappointed with this one.  I haven't had one that topped Alembic's yet.  One canoe of bone marrow with a couple slices of toasted bread and chili de arbol jelly.  The combination of the marrow and the jelly tasted like the sweet and sour sauce at Wendy's, which isn't a bad thing in my book, but it could have been better. 

Every coastal Latin American country has their own take on ceviche.  The ceviche was amazing here!  Probably some of the best ceviche I've had in a long time.  The cerviche mixto (mixed cerviche) comes with squid, shrimp, halibut and fried corn.  Each piece of seafood is juicy and fresh.  The fried corn is more of a corn cracker that reminds me of a rice cracker so it give each bite of ceviche some contrasting textures.  The best part of this ceviche is the sauce.  I could slurp it up with a spoon, which I was happily doing until one of the bussers took away the plate between my slurps.  The marinade is really spicy with hints of fresh tasting lime.  So tasty.

I've eaten tongue from duck, cow, pig, chicken, and various other types of animals, but I've never tasted tongue like this.  The lengua (tongue) is braised in melbec and sits on top chayote (squash) and salsa verde.  The texture of the chayote reminds me of a taro.  The tongue is so tender that if someone told me it was beef cheek I would never doubt it.  

The asada mixto (mixed grilled meat platter) from bottom left;clockwise: padron peppers, chorizo, shortrib, blood sausage, skirt steak.  It also comes with a couple of pieces of grilled better that mostly serves as filler.  The chorizo was probably my least favorite of the bunch.  It had zero flavor and spiciness plus the texture was really soft.  The grilled shortrib was tender and juicy, but having had a lot of korean short ribs in my time, this was nothing special.  The blood sausage was really delicate and the consistency just fell apart even before you put it in your mouth.  Somewhat grainy, blood sausage isn't exactly for everyone's palette.  This one wasn't too irony and I thought lacked some flavor.  The grilled skirt steak was well cooked and probably this and the short ribs were the best meats in their platter.  The wost thing on this platter was the chimichurri sauce.  Not even close to anything that resembles chimichurri, this sauce was extremely oily and tasted of nothing but oil.  That was really disappointing since I love chimichurri sauce.

An Argentinian play on cookies and milk made with dulce de leche alfajores and a vanilla milkshake.  Alfajores are a traditional sweet dessert found in Spain and part of Latin America.  In Argentina, alfajores are commonly made with dulce de leche filling.  These powery cookies crumble in your mouth almost instantly when you bite into them.  The sweet dulce de leche filling is so decadent I could only have a cookie and a half.  Delicious and recommended for those with a sweet tooth.  The vanilla milkshake was a little too watery and icey for me, but it complimented the cookie well. 

I'm still looking for the perfect churros con chocolate similar to the crispy churros in Madrid (see post HERE) and the velvety chocolate sauce for dipping like in Lima (see post HERE).  The churros here were a tad on the greasy side with an oily aftertaste and the chocolate didn't coat the churro in a nice thick layer. 

Address:                 Lolinda
                                2518 Mission St.
                                San Francisco, CA
  

Type:                       Argentinean

Popular chomps:  ceviche de mixto
                                 empanada de maiz (corn empanada)
                                 pulpo (octopus)
                                 hueso asada (bone marrow)  
                                 lengua (tongue)
                                 lubina al horno (branzino)
                                 asado mixto
                                 cookies and milk
                                 churros

Chomp worthy:    ceviche de mixto
                                 empanada de maiz
                                 lengua
                                 cookies and milk        

Venga Empanadas

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Venga Empanadas is a small shop that sells both meat and vegetarian empanadas.  I've often walked by this shop, but for some reason I always thought it said vegan empanadas.  Being in San Francisco, I wouldn't have been surprised if it was vegan.  Anyways, you can either eat them there or get them to go.  If you get them to go you have the option of getting them heated up or cold.  I suggest getting them heated up and snacking on the empanadas while walking around the Mission.

Argentine beef empanadas - #33 on 2012 7x7 SF's Top 100 Eats

I'm used to seeing and eating empanadas with a more flakey crust.  Venga's is a thicker, doughey crust that keeps its shape intact while chomping into these meat filled pockets.  The Argentine beef empanadas were filled with ground beef, onions, red bell peppers, and hard boiled egg.  I didn't see any hard boiled egg in my empanada, but the filling was really flavorful.  The peppers gave the empanada a slight sweetness.

The spicy beef empanada filled with slow cooked ribs in hot chile sauce with chipotle peppers.  Definitely not spicy at all.  After eating the Argentine beef empanada first, this one seemed a little bland.  

updated - Working my way through the 2012 7x7's SF big eat 100 things

Address:                          Venga Empanadas
                                                443 Valencia St.
                                                San Francisco, CA  
 

Type:                                  Argentinian/Latin/casual

Popular chomps:      Argentine beef empanadas
                                                 alfajor                                         

Chomp worthy:           Argentine beef empanadas