A chef ’s journey
Hard work and hardship led to Nopalito in S.F.
“We got lost in the desert for five days,” recalls Gonzalo Guzman, chef and coowner of Nopalito. “We ate rattlesnake, wild cactus. A month-and-a-half after we left Puebla, I finally arrived in San Francisco.”
Guzman was 15 years old at the time he made the crossing from Mexico to the United States, and settled into a onebedroom apartment on Treat Street in San Francisco with nine other occupants, including his father. The elder Guzman had come to California six months prior and, given the hardship, had urged his son not to join him.
Forget fancy culinary school — Guzman, who spoke no English, recalls his first job, working without pay in trade for food, then later convincing a restaurant owner he was 18 in order to land a dishwashing job that paid $4.70 an hour.
After years washing dishes, he was eventually moved into the prep kitchen and from there, eventually, the hot line. He learned to cook through years and years of double shifts: Jardinière in the morning, Boulevard at night. Kokkari at dawn, Chez Nous until long after midnight. In his little time off, he took classes at City College of San Francisco, eventually learning English and earning his GED, which his son insisted he hang on the wall of their apartment.
His success is not so much about talent, though he undoubtedly possesses it. It’s about work, determination and true grit. “I teach classes at San Francisco Cooking School,” says Guzman, “and a lot of the students want a restaurant. I try to tell them how much work it is, this life.”
He met Laurence Jossel at Kokkari, and helped him open Chez Nous (now closed), then Nopa. Nopalito, Nopa’s little sister, was their shared dream.
The idea for a restaurant that served regional Mexican food — including dishes from Guzman’s native Veracruz — made with the best ingredients available, grew out of the staff meals Guzman would prepare, including carnitas, now a Nopalito signature.
Seventeen years after arriving in San Francisco, Guzman, whose easy smile and baby face belies his 33 years, is now chef-partner of Nopalito, which has two locations in San Francisco, and is thinking about his next restaurant.
“I’m trying to represent my people by cooking dishes with a tradition and a history,” he says.
Nopalito, which opened six years ago on Broderick Street in San Francisco, has grown into something of a small empire. Together, the two restaurants serve 28,000 corn tortillas every week, made by hand from organic corn they import by the pallet. The dried corn kernals are soaked in water and slaked lime overnight (a process known as nixtamalization), then ground into masa. To keep up with demand, there is someone making tortillas 16 hours a day.
They go to a lot of trouble for tortillas, but they’re Nopalito’s backbone.
The freshly griddled blue corn ones, made from corn sourced from a family farm in New Mexico, are used for quesadillas folded around vegetables and cheese. A steaming stack accompanies the legendary carnitas. And fried until crunchy, the tortillas are transformed into tostadas, smeared with refried beans made from heirloom beans from Napa’s Rancho Gordo and topped with chicken tinga.
Tinga is a traditional dish from Puebla, a simple, quick stew of onions, garlic, tomatoes and chiles that can be made with chicken, pork or beef. To make the tinga tostadas, Guzman first shallow-fries tortillas until they’re light golden brown, filling the kitchen with a rich, earthy corn aroma. It’s a smell that occasionally brings Guzman’s neighbors to his door, wondering what he’s cooking.
He refries cooked pinquito beans, first searing them in oil and then mashing them with a potato masher until creamy, then spreads them on the tortillas, topping each with a generous spoonful of tinga and a lashing of kefir cream.
Tostadas, sloppy though they are, are meant to be eaten out of hand. “My son was taking a manners class, and he came home insisting on eating tostadas with a fork and knife,” says Guzman. “But you gotta just hold and eat them, make a mess. I looked at him, holding the utensils, and said, ‘You’re in the house. Put those away.’ ”
Nopalito: 306 Broderick St. (near Fell Street), San Francisco; (415) 535-3969. Also: 1224 Ninth Ave. (near Lincoln Way), San Francisco; (415) 233-9966. www.nopalitosf.com