S. F.’ S LIQUID GOLD TAKES THE SMALL- BATCH APPROACH TO BEER
In San Francisco, we like to blur the line between slow and fast food. A cup of coffee now takes five minutes to brew. A porchetta sandwich at the farmers’ market requires a 30- minute wait in line. And let’s not even discuss the travails of getting an Indian- Portuguese-Ghanaian burrito from a food truck. Sometimes, the reverse holds true.
At El Pípila’s new stand in the Market Hall in San Francisco, for instance, it only takes a couple of minutes for Guadalupe Guerrero and her daughters Brenda and Alejandra to ladle up their pozole verde, yet it tastes as if it has simmered overnight.
If you’ve encountered El Pípila’s pozole before, it was probably at an Off the Grid gathering, or perhaps the Street Food Festival; the La Cocina incubator program participants have made their living on large events and corporate catering for three years now. The Market Hall’s first casualty ( a coffee stand) allowed El Pípila to take over one of its six berths, where Guerrero serves a short canon of Guanajuato dishes — plus kale salad, of course — she’s mastered over the years.
Any Tenderloin booster fretting that tech- company workers, glutted on free snacks and catered lunches, will not support local restaurants should stop by Market Hall. More than just an indie food court, the open- plan, Make magazine-influenced space has become a watering hole to which herds of 25year- olds migrate to debate the existence of studio apartments costing less than $ 2,000 and to string together buzzwords with less fluidity than they compose code.
For them, Guerrero and her daughters fry tortillas on an electric griddle, onto which they mound tender carnitas and let diners finish by slathering on roasted- tomato salsa or chartreuse salsa verde. There is a reason El Pípila labels its chicken sopes its signature dish: The thick masa cakes are topped with refried beans and poached chicken with such depth of flavor you wonder where it all came from without the aid of MSG.
But the pozole verde is the dish that you should be speed- walking your way toward at lunch.
It evokes a Sunday- supper memory for Guerrero: Pozole was the soup that her grandmother cooked for her family in the small town where she grew up. The flavor will come as a surprise to diners used to Jaliscan pozole rojo, with its pork stock and toasted- chile resonance. The herbaceous tang of pureed tomatillos provides the throughline here, eclipsing the underlying savor of the chicken stock and the bits of fried bacon that float amid the hominy kernels. Guerrero provides chips and lime to add to the soup, but they’re not needed. The sulfurous crunch of fine threads of fresh cabbage and minced onions, not to mention a pinch of oregano, keep each bite tasting new.
The soup is too good for a takeout container and a compostable spoon. You may find yourself tipping out tiny cupfuls for your co- workers, recruiting companions for your next trip. To find slow food a 15- minute dash away from the office? A gift.