San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
The secret is out on a sandwich so good it sells out by 8:30 a.m.
Find the Bay Area’s torta masterpiece at Peña’s Bakery, a panaderia in Oakland
If sandwich makers are artists, then Maria De La Luz Briones is the Michelangelo of tortas, and her Sistine Chapel is made with chorizo con papas. The first time I tried that particular torta ($9), disintegrating potatoes and pepperspiced sausage cradled in soft bread, it felt like a spiritual rebirth. In it, I could taste my grandma’s cooking, my mom’s cooking and the generations of cooking to come.
In the last few months, I’ve been obsessed with Peña’s Bakery in Oakland, the panaderia where Briones makes her stupendous tortas. But like a guilty secret, I’ve been keeping these tortas to myself.
I know my job is to sniff out the Bay Area’s most exciting food and share it with readers. The rub is that these tortas are limited in supply and mostly insider knowledge, part of a local ecology, the fuel of local construction workers and day laborers for the day ahead.
If I divulged my secret torta source, would it potentially disrupt someone’s daily routine? It’s something that I always consider when I write about places, like home restaurants and stands, that serve their communities first. I always check with the owners to make sure they’re OK with potential higher visibility. After much contemplation, I decided that the world must know about this level of sandwich artistry — and later this year, these tortas will be more widely available, easing my conscience.
For now, it takes some real effort to actually get your hands on these elusive sandwiches.
On a sunny day in Fruitvale, I was skipping down Foothill Boulevard and happened across the bakery, enticed by the cases of pan dulce. It was relatively empty, and I noticed that Briones was making tortas at a deli station. Only, I didn’t see a food menu. Curious, I asked her what kind of tortas she was making. “Chorizo con papas,” she responded, “but I’m sold out.” It was 8:30 a.m. She assured me that more would be available tomorrow.
Enticed by the scarcity, I showed up an hour earlier the next day, during the breakfast rush. Men in work clothes splattered with Jackson Pollock paint splotches cycled into the bakery in rapid succession. Some grabbed a concha or a cuerno along with a coffee and, like a reflex, Briones or bakery owner Arturo Peña asked if they wanted a torta today. They almost always did.
Behind the glass display case, Briones works fast, stacking slices of ham over spongy, traditional telera bread, smearing it with mayo, gingerly drizzling it with a hellish salsa and quickly wrapping the result in paper then plastic. At this pace, I witnessed firsthand how quickly the tortas fly out the door. Luckily, I was able to procure one that day.
The makeup of the torta is straightforward, consisting of chorizo swirled with supersoft
potato cubes, pickled jalapeños, a thick smudge of mayo and, optionally but most importantly, salsa; it’s considerably spicy but plays well with the other flavors and textures. The filling has occasional crunchy bits of pork, its red oils seeping in the squishy bread. The chorizo con papa torta also benefits from the secret seasoning of home cooking: See, Briones makes the potato and chorizo mixture the night before service, letting it sit for a day to concentrate the flavors. It’s a common technique used in Mexican home cooking for guisados, which often reach peak flavor after a day.
Briones is from Guadalajara, Jalisco, by way of San Luis Potosi. She’s always loved cooking, and like many immigrant chefs, she’s a selftaught talent who understands how to wield and build flavor. She came to the States 22 years
ago and has worked at Peña’s Bakery, which is owned by Arturo, her brother-in-law, ever since. Peña’s Bakery is one of two in Fruitvale (the other is on International Boulevard). Though the bakeries are owned by the same family, they are independently operated — and only the Foothill location has Briones.
There weren’t always tortas at the bakery. But over time, Briones has become the de facto chef here, usually cooking for the staff. One day in 2019, she was making tortas for the crew, using the telera bread baked in-house, and some nosy construction workers asked if they could order two.
Briones obliged them, and they haven’t stopped coming. There’s still no menu, and the tortas are only available from 7 to 11 a.m., though if she’s around and has the product on hand, she’ll make you one.
I’ve learned to adopt a sort of omakase, trust-the-chef approach to trying her tortas, like I would when I was a kid at home, eating what my mom decided to cook up that day. On my subsequent visits, I missed the chorizo window, but the ham torta ($8) is always available, and it’s awesome, too. Briones’ extra touches are what make it work, like a thick pad of queso fresco, those pickled peppers, onion slivers and the crucial hit of salt and pepper.
One day, after she noticed my devotion to these tortas, she told me to try the cheese torta ($8), another triumph in her arsenal. It’s a variant of the ham torta, without the pork and with more crumbly, salty queso fresco. Other days, she had wobbly chicharron tortas ($9) cooked in a hot salsa. Salsas are also driven by her mood; sometimes it’s a spicy tomato-based one or a highly
combustible salsa roja made of mostly fiery, earthy chiles de arbol.
Later this year, Briones plans to open a food truck, which she’ll park outside the bakery, offering some favorite tortas like the showstopping chorizo as well as a more expanded menu of fried quesadillas and birria tacos. Briones’ soon-to-come lonchera means that the construction worker ecosystem will still exist, but the torta supply will increase — hence my decision it was fair game to write about these magnificent tortas.
Still, food like this will always be rare, because natural cooking talent like Briones’ is uncommon. It doesn’t always come from a restaurant, and tortas like hers are even harder to find.