Home style in the Castro
What to order: Conchita pibil ($14), tacos ($4 for one), panuchos ($5), empanadas ($5).
Where: Tacorgasmico, 2337 Market St. (Noe Street), San Francisco. (415) 565-0655. www. tacorgasmico.com.
When: 5-10 p.m. Monday-Thurday, 11 a.m.-11 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Sunday.
Hand Job Nails. The Sausage Factory. Spunk Salon.
The Castro has no shortage of punny businesses drawing on the neighborhood’s reputation for fun and salaciousness.
And with its suggestive name and sidewalk sign offering “simple Mexican pleasures,” Tacorgasmico seemingly fits right in with its neighbors. Social media exploded with jokes upon news of its opening; more than a few food writers piled on as well.
But to dismiss Tacorgasmico as a gimmick is to miss out on the taqueria’s excellent home-style Mexican cooking and colorful interior, swirling with Day of the Dead motifs.
There are other places to get a taco fix on this block of Market — Tacos Club and Hecho are across the street — but none serve supple housemade tortillas better than those turned out from Tacorgasmico’s kitchen.
Nor do they have the low-and-slow-cooked marvel cochinita pibil, a dish from the Yucatan in which pork is marinated in citrus and cooked in a banana leaf for hours until it’s wonderfully tender, falling apart with just the hint of a fork’s pressure. It’s served in tacos, sopes, quesadillas and burritos, but best in the generous-size entree, where it shares real estate with well-seasoned rice, black beans, pickled red onions, chopped cabbage, avocado and warm tortillas.
Owner Eduardo Sandoval opened Tacorgasmico in late April with the aim to serve dishes that he missed from his native Guanajuato in central Mexico. The menu has since expanded to include harder-to-find dishes from all over his home country, like the cochinita pibil, rajas (rich slices of sauteed poblano peppers), tlayudas (crisp tortillas from Oaxaca with toppings like a pizza) and panuchos (fried tortillas stuffed with black beans from the Yucatan).
Sandoval also wanted the restaurant’s design to hark back to Mexico, so he hired local artists to paint Day-Glo murals featuring skulls, devils, spiderwebs and other intricately rendered iconography from the Day of the Dead. Color also infuses the rest of the restaurant, from the fuchsia walls behind the front counter to the rainbow menu above it. One flat-screen near the front plays sports and cable news; another in back shows a slideshow of dishes from the menu.
That slideshow is a blessing and a curse. The hand-lettered menu is difficult to parse, and as you wait for your meal, your eyes may land on a photo of something you missed at first glance, like elote — corn on the cob slathered with crema and cheese — giving you serious FOMO for all the things you didn’t order.
Rest assured, though, that it’s hard to go wrong.
Tacos are crowned with cream and cotija cheese, making even vegetarian toppings like stewed nopalitos or rajas into a decadent meal, though you may be attracted to meatier options like carne asada and the citrusy, slowcooked chicken. The menu also has taquitos, tortas, tostadas and empanadas, all coming in generous portions. It’s easy to fill up on less than 10 bucks.
Tacorgasmico is still working out some kinks. Service can be slow; drinks like margaritas and rumchata (horchata and rum) are inelegantly mixed. One visit had fresh tortilla chips but the next found them tired and stale under the heat lamp. The salsas, too, could have a bit more verve — ask for the habanero, kept behind the counter because of its potent burn.
And despite its authentic roots, this is still the Castro, and Sandoval is experimenting with later hours and drink specials for Taco Tuesday to fill the empty seats with more people from the neighborhood.
As long as those tacos include the slow-cooked pork, I’ll brave a boozy scene — and that corny name — any day of the week.