Mission Mission

Boba Guys is back in action, and they’ve put together this Royal Tenenbaums-style video to show off their cast of characters. Has it been too long since you’ve had some balls in your mouth? Head to Suika at 18th and Mission, where the Boba Guys (and Girls) have been slinging drinks during lunch hours all week.

Prescribed me a burrito.

You know I meant seitan! This joke has been done a million times on a million vegan menus. Just kidding!! A million vegan menus is something that will only happen when hell freezes over. The Mission, however, is abundant with seitan-based dishes with diabolic names. So light a black candle and get your cloven hooves on these demonic, gluten-y treats:

• The Hell Fish Taco (Dante’s Weird Fish): Seitan, avocado, and pico de gallo in a taco formation.
• Devil Burger (St. Francis): Seitan piled on top of a vegan burger? Well, okay!
• Satan’s Philly Cheese-fake (Bender’s): The most evil thing about this sandwich is the number cocktails I seem to accompany it with.

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Valencia’s West of Pecos, the Tex-Mex restaurant from the people behind seafood stalwart Woodhouse Fish Co., has been firing on all cylinders. Hiding behind the painted cow skulls and dried chiles hanging from the ceiling are some great hearty dishes (I’m partial to the ribs.) The happy hour dollar tacos (pork, duck, and veggie) from 5-6:30 really put it over the top.

As for the drink menu, the selections have been pared down to the best of the best and at this point it’s hard to go wrong. Although the ladies seem to gravitate toward the beautiful and tasty Prickly Pecos Marg, I spend most of my time with the Rodeo Ghost, a bitter, smoky mezcal cocktail that’s surprisingly drinkable, which unfortunately often leads me to have three in a row.  A modified negroni, the drink uses amaro and bitters to cut through the overbearing flavor of the mezcal. And it just looks sharp, right?

Drink of the week is brought to you by Poachedjobs.com.

The gals from Rice Paper Scissors showed Vice TV’s Eddie Huang around a few Mission locations recently, namely Duc Loi Supermarket and and Sun Fat Seafood.

He ranted a bit about the state of Asian food appreciation in the United States, then they grilled a bunch of shelled and tentacled creatures on the street while sitting in their signature plastic red stools. The food wasn’t served up with one of RPS’s controversial $4 artisanal smoothie shots, but rather with a Tecate topped off with a ring of Sriracha around it’s mouth. How’s that for fusion cuisine?

Check out the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLSf6rpLfvs

It’s cool to see the presence of Mission Asian businesses getting a nod. Which, in my opinion, is an often overlooked aspect of the ‘hood.

Eddie, says the next episode is about burritos, so stay tuned.

Got a note from a publicist:

[I]n honor of Todd Selby’s Edible Selby book, the Bar Tartine crew is hosting a fun bunch of guest chefs (Danny Bowein, Ignacio Mattos, and Russell Moore of Camino) at the restaurant to make sandwiches on Monday, 11 – 3. It’s open to everyone, and the chefs will be hanging out all day, copies of Edible Selby will be for sale. I wish I had more specific menu info for you, but knowing these guys, sandwich offerings should be diverse and playful…

Where: Bar Tartine

Date: Monday, October 22

Time: 11:00am – 3:00pm

Address: 561 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110

The event is open to the public — sandwiches will be sold individually or guest can pay $60 to for a guest chef sandwich, Edible Selby book and Selby-designed tote bag.

I don’t know anything about books, but I love me a playful sandwich

[Image via the Selby]

It has been quite some time since I’ve contributed to Mission Vegan. I apologize. There has been a bit of a dearth in new and exciting vegan eats in the Mission, I’m afraid, and I was feeling sort of down about it. There are so many new restaurants on Valencia, and not only are they out of my income bracket, but they don’t have a single damn vegan thing on the menu. I don’t think restaurants are obliged to provide vegan options, but it is a nice thing to do because sometimes even omnivores get tired of pork belly and weird artisan cheese. Plus, it sort of makes me think that these fancy pants chefs aren’t very creative if they must rely on animal products to develop a dish. Anyways, I digress. This post isn’t about how much the Mission and Valencia Street suck now. We have enough of that.

Us vegans have it pretty lucky in the Mission though, especially when it comes to pizza. Escape from New York and Beretta both offer vegan pizza and Paxti’s and Amici’s deliver to the Mission. Once upon a time, however, we weren’t so lucky. The dark days of a Mission without vegan pizza were tough. We’d request cheese-less pizza from Serrano’s and get strange looks. Or, we’d buy those crappy Amy’s vegan pizzas from Cala Foods and dump a bunch of Tapatio on them and pretend they were tasty. It was hard times, my friends.

There was one place that did offer a vegan pizza, however: Atlas Cafe. As a Northern Californian, I don’t claim to know anything about pizza, but I do know that what Atlas offers should NOT be called pizza. The No Cheese Pizza’s toppings are an unholy trinity of sweet potatoes, beets, and avocados–three things that are a) too heavy to go on a pizza and b) have no business being on a fucking pizza!!!! And oh wait, I almost forgot, it also has tofu on it? The first time I ordered it, I was like “oh hell no,” but once I started forking it into my mouth (you can’t pick it up and eat it like normal pizza), it started to grow on me. It is so wrong, that it is right. I ordered it again the other day for the first time in years and this mystic pizza thing still holds strong.

So thank you, Atlas Cafe, for being a vegan pizza mainstay in the Mission. Never take it off your menu.

Yay 1st day of pumpkin soft serve at the Creamery (Friday fall special)! Twist it up w/ vanilla, maybe some spiced pecans on top?? 3-9pm #i

— bi-rite market (@BiRiteSF) October 19, 2012

(Thanks, Nattles!)

It really speaks to the quality of the product when the purveyors consider their food delicious enough to eat themselves. And I’m totally admiring the decorations adorning this little alcove, too, which come together nicely to promote the authenticity of the rustic fare. Everything except for the overalls! Why do people still wear overalls???

With that said, they do fit the theme, and I must admit that was some damn good chili.

And thus BLL continues its path toward world domination.

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