Mark Denham, former chef of Laiola (may it rest in peace) and many other fine restaurants, is working hard to open his new restaurant, Bishop. We can’t wait.
What’s your first taco memory?
As kids my mom made us tacos with the store-bought crunchy shells, ground beef with ‘taco seasoning’, yellow cheese and chopped iceberg lettuce. The town I grew up in, Fremont, was chosen to be a test market for one of the very first Taco Bells in California. This was in the late sixties—they kinda set the standard for what a taco was supposed to be like. My first real taco experience was at my grandparent’s here in San Francisco. They lived on York betweet 21st & 22nd in the Mission, and my grandma made my sister and I traditional soft tacos, with double tortillas, slightly greasy, a simple meat filling—no lettuce, no cheese, no sour cream, and no black pitted olives. I’m sure my little sis and I thought she was crazy. These looked and tasted nothing like the tacos we knew. We were probably about 7 or 8 years old then.
Best taco memory?
I lived and traveled in Mexico for about a year in 1989, mostly in DF and I had many memorable tacos, one place called La Especial in the meat packing disrtict specialized in offal tacos. They had a hand-painted menu on the wall with about two dozen options, every thing from the usual items, tongue, tripe, liver, to the more exotic like spleen, brains and testicles, to outright oddities like trompa (muzzel), garganta (esophogus), pulmas (lungs), and my favoite: ojos (eyeballs). But my standard everyday taco was from a cart near the entrance of Chapultepec park that only sold ‘suadero’ tacos, that’s a euphemism for the sweepings from the butcher shop’s floor. Never quite knew what was in them but they were always delicious and dirt cheap. You could get three for 500 pesos, this was before Mexico had devalued the peso to fight inflatio, under a buck for three of ’em. I went there at least once a week.
What was the inspiration for your market taco?
I moved to Santa Fe directly from Mexico City and fell in love with the surrounding area and the little town of Chimayo, famous for their Santuario with it’s ‘healing dirt’ and the heirloom red chile used to make adovada, a thick, brick-red stew, usually made with pork or beef chuck sold from a stand right behind the church. The stand is called Leona’s also makes awesome adovada-stuffed tamales. When I lived there it really was just rickety stand, I think they cooked out of a house behind the stand. Now I understand it’s become more of a restaurant, but before there wasn’t even a spot to sit down, everything was sold to-go. Back then you had to run a gauntlet past houses with snarling pitbulls chained in the front yards to get to the place.
What’s your favorite taco in SF?
I have a weakness for the fried fish tacos at Nick’ crispy. They remind me of the ones we used to eat post surf in north county San Diego at a bar near the Del Mar race track. I also love Tacos Morenos in Santa Cruz, and La Taqueria, though I usually get a bean and cheese (with avocado and green sauce) burrito there. If you’re every down in Watsonville on a Friday afternoon, you gotta get the sopes at the stand at the farmers market downtown. The potato and green chile ones are awesome.