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Food of the Andes Finds a Home in San Francisco
By GREGORY DICUM | The New York Times
San Francisco has a well-deserved reputation for restaurant fare that is freshly inventive, but with studiously authentic roots. Gastón Acurio, a celebrity chef in Lima, Peru, known for his novo-Andino cuisine, which adds modern sensibilities about freshness, presentation and technique to the culinary traditions of Peru, took note of this when considering where to open his beachhead restaurant in the United States. "In San Francisco, people love to eat, and are open to new cultures and flavors," Mr. Acurio said. "It's the best place for us to start our dream of bringing our food to America."
The city's connection to Peru dates back to Gold Rush days, when pisco, white Peruvian brandy, was the drink of choice. So late last year, Mr. Acurio opened La Mar Cebicheria Peruana (Pier 1 ½; 415-397-8880; www.lamarcebicheria.com), adding to a collection of Peruvian restaurants to make San Francisco perhaps the best place in North America to sample Peru's rapidly evolving, fervid foodie scene.
A new generation of often classically trained chefs (Mr. Acurio studied at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris) is making wildly creative use of Peru's diversity. The country's climate zones range from Amazonian to alpine, nurturing all kinds of foods, and its riot of cultural influences includes Andean, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese and African.
"By nature, Peruvian cuisine is a fusion cuisine," said Alejandro Reccio, chef de cuisine at Limón, an elegantly boisterous Peruvian restaurant in the Mission District. Limón (524 Valencia Street; 415-252-0918; www.limon-sf.com) was recently closed for remodeling but is reopening soon. Meanwhile, an annex, Limón Rotisserie (1001 South Van Ness Avenue; 415-821-2134; www.limonrotisserie.com), is serving a limited but well-executed menu focusing on pollo a la brasa — rotisserie chicken. Ceviche, the classic dish of raw fish marinated in lime juice and spices, contains echoes of Inca dishes, but with limes, a Spanish introduction. In its modern form, it arose at the hands of Japanese chefs employed in the kitchens of Peruvian gentry. At Limón, the ceviche de pescado ($9.25) is dependably good; a zingy sauce and delectable choclo (big Peruvian corn) kernels enliven toothsome chunks of halibut. >>> Go to Full Story >>>
Mexican vs. American Hot Dogs
By JOHN T. EDGE | The New York Times
"The problem with American hot dogs is that they're American," said Tania Murillo, standing beneath a pink and blue bunny-shaped piñata, as she rang up an order of tortillas at Alejandro's Tortilla Factory. "A ketchup-and-mustard hot dog is boring," continued Ms. Murillo, a high school senior. "They’re not colorful enough. You've got to make them colorful, and pile on the stuff. The best hot dogs come from Sonora," the Mexican state immediately to the south. "Everybody knows that."
In Tucson more than 100 vendors, known as hotdogueros, peddle Sonoran-style hot dogs — candy cane-wrapped in bacon, griddled until dog and bacon fuse, garnished with a kitchen sink of taco truck condiments and stuffed into split-top rolls that owe a debt to both Mexican bolillo loaves and grocery store hot dog buns. Many, like Ruiz Hot-Dogs on Sixth Avenue, work step-side carts with two-item menus of Sonoran hot dogs and soft drinks. Set in dirt and gravel parking lots, beneath makeshift shelters, under mesquite tree arbors, these peripatetic vendors serve fast food for day laborers, craftsmen and policemen, the typical patrons of traditional hot dog stands in any town.
For at least the last 40 years, likely longer, borderland vendors, in Tucson and elsewhere, have been refashioning the hot dog with a cloak of bacon, a clump of beans and a chop of tomatoes and onions, followed by squirts of mayonnaise, mustard and salsa verde. (Ketchup and other condiments show up, too. More recently, some vendors have begun offering a topping of crumbled potato chips.) In a dozen or more cities across the United States, these Mexican takes on the American hot dog are ascendant — from Chicago to Denver to Los Angeles, where illegal street vendors selling so-called danger dogs to late-night crowds play hide-and-seek with the local health department. >>> Go to Full Story >>>
In Los Angeles, Songs Without Borders
By LAWRENCE DOWNES | The New York Times
There are many ways to know a city — through its restaurants or museums, its landmarks or outdoor spaces. But one way to get to a city's heart is to immerse yourself in its music.
You might think that would be impossible to do in Los Angeles, a landscape far too huge, too varied, too dizzying to ever sort out. But if you stick to the Los Angeles that has been remade by Mexicans and Mexican-Americans, the parts shaped by waves of immigration, assimilation and reinvention, you travel on remarkably stable ground. Wherever you go in this rich, sprawling terrain — getting off the freeways, driving through downtown and then heading generally south and east to suburbs like Vernon, South Gate, Lynwood, Huntington Park, El Monte, Pico Rivera — you can follow the sounds of the Mexican countryside.
In clubs, bars, swap meets and concert halls, from car radios and ringing cellphones, you will hear corridos, old-time folk ballads in the banda and norteño styles. "Corridos are part of the literature of the common people," wrote Chris Strachwitz, who founded Arhoolie Records and has spent a lifetime collecting and studying traditional Mexican music.
Many of these songs will be narcocorridos, stories of bandits and outlaws updated to the age of drug cartels and AK-47s, and known to some, because of their grim authenticity and bad reputation, as "the rap of modern Mexico." And in all these places, even if you listen only a little while, you will hear Chalino, or someone trying to sound like him. Chalino was the nickname of Rosalino Sánchez, one of the most influential composers and singers of narcocorridos. Mexicans know him as a valiente, a brave one: armed, dangerous and doomed. Comparisons are superficial, but you could think of him as part Billy the Kid, part Bill Monroe. A hip-hop idol from down on the ranch. Maybe like Johnny Cash, if Johnny Cash truly had been Folsom Prison material. But then not really. There was no one like Chalino. >> Go to Full Story >>>
