Crispiest, juiciest chicharrones in the Bay Area

Meaty and succulent, this fried pork crackles with flavor. And don’t sleep on the super spicy salsas

At 5:30 a.m. in a backyard in east San Jose, Juan Ballona of Nano’s Chicharrones, a home-based restaurant, puts on his heavy-duty apron, ties a bandana around his head and heats up lard in a copper cazo, his preferred frying vessel, until it bubbles.

Frying chicharrones is a dangerous game.

It’s crucial that the fat is ripping hot because it’s what gives the pork belly that profound color and flavor. Not long ago, the hot lard popped and got into his eye (he was fortunately unharmed), so safety is the main priority. Wearing safety goggles and with a long metal paddle in hand, Ballona looks like a mad scientist tinkering with perilous ingredients.

His wild (and great) experiment: hefty, meaty chicharrones that are top-to-bottom crunchy. Nano’s uses thick pork belly, fried until a deep, dark orange with a smooth skin, a deviation from the more standard bubbly exterior. The high-temperature frying creates an unbelievable crackle — the crunch levels of sturdy skin reach the glass-like qualities of a great lechon or pernil, the other peaks of crispy pork.

Try as you might, you won’t find chicharrones like this anywhere else in the Bay Area.

Nano’s chicharrones manage to be exceedingly crisp, meaty and succulent. Encased in an edible exoskeleton of fried pork, the inside gushes with rendered fat.

The closest you can get is going to a carniceria, which sells fried pork in two ways. The most common is made with just skin, which balloons to long, craggy planks; the other is a similar version that still has some (mostly) dried-out meat on it.

Nano’s chicharrones, by contrast, manage to be exceedingly crisp, meaty and succulent. Encased in an edible exoskeleton of fried pork, the inside gushes with rendered fat. The white meat of the belly is covered in a fried, crunchy halo.

A pound of this coveted fried gold will run $20, and it’s worth every cent. But what completes the ritual are the earthy, blisteringly hot salsa verde and roja ($5). The searing flavor of the salsas gives the richness direction, reaching new heights of flavor.

Nano’s offers yet another example that some of the finest foods in the Bay Area live at someone’s house. The business sells chicharrones and other food through social media: You DM or text your order, and Elizabeth Ballona, Juan’s wife, will give you the prices, time and pickup address. Elizabeth, in charge of marketing and sales, is the other half of Nano’s — the business brains behind the operation.

Nano’s started in 2020 during the early months of the pandemic, when Juan, who worked as a butcher, made chicharrones for friends and family. In May 2020, Elizabeth, a bona fide hustler who has experience selling items like Mickey Mouse ears through social media for extra cash, posted her husband’s masterful chicharrones on TikTok. Her inbox was flooded with people who wanted a taste, one of whom was an influencer who posted a viral video of the fried pork outfit. Nano’s own videos regularly perform well, too, drawing millions of eyes to the formidable crunch. The orders started to roll in and haven’t really stopped since. Some customers fly in from Southern California and beyond just to smuggle back suitcases full of the crackly contraband.

The couple started selling 10 pounds of pork on weekends as a side hustle; now their output has grown exponentially to 100 to 120 pounds a day, or 300 pounds a week. They have their eyes set on a restaurant and briefly considered a truck but abandoned that idea for its lack of space. For now, Juan continues his swine experimentation in the backyard; he began with one cazo, and now he’s up to four.

The fried pork operation’s main focus is chicharrones, but on occasion, depending on availability, Nano’s offers other options like sensational, extra large “Tijuana-style” tacos ($8) made on thick, pita-like flour tortillas consisting of grilled cheese and simmered chicharron in salsa and beans. (For the tortilla nerds, these flour disks are sourced from Los Angeles-based Tijuana-style taqueria Perro 110.) Or you might come across the hauntingly spicy, saucy chicharron guiso (stewed protein) as a plate with rice and beans ($15) or stuffed into fluffy tamales (six for $20).

Juan is meticulous. In spite of the business expanding, he does it all himself: inspecting all the cuero (skin), shaving off excess hair with a sharp knife, drying and salting the pork a day in advance — to open up the pores and remove excess moisture — and all the cooking responsibilities. He learned the trade as a teenager in Mexico’s Distrito Federal, inquisitively watching his uncles work bubbling cazos.

He’s a humble man with that inviting, sharply witty tone that most Chilangos, Mexico City natives, possess. Over the phone, he tells me that these chicharrones aren’t nearly as good as the ones made with freshly slaughtered pork.

I tell him what he’s made is pretty special, and he brushes it off. Wait until you try my carnitas, he says.

Photos by LiPo Ching/Special to The Chronicle Juan Ballona, above, suits up in protective gear to avoid hot oil splashes as he cooks up chicharrones in a cauldron in the driveway of his San Jose home. His business took off when his wife posted pictures of the porcine product, left, on TikTok.

Chicharrones cook at Nano’s Chicharrones, a home restaurant in San Jose that specializes in shatteringly crisp chicharrones.