strEAT Food Collective



SOMA – the permanent food truck lot
Sunday, 17 March 2013 00:00

SOMA permanent street food parkGuest blog by Carla Spuri @bribedwithfood

You may be fooled into thinking a week in San Francisco is a lot of time, but then you start counting the food trucks. All those mobile bearers of treats can represent a daunting tour de force around a city you don't know. Then you find the SOMA Streat Food Park and your worries and nightmares of guided tours (following a flag up and down the SF hills disappear). An old parking lot space repossessed by Carlos Muela has been turned into a safe haven for a selection of Frisco's finest street food traders. SOMA welcomes you with Latin American music blaring out from the centralised sound system and a perfectly organised seating area surrounded by a selection of the best food trucks in town. Carlos already owned two Spanish restaurants in the Mission area of the city, but he wanted to bring together other food traders to offer everyone the chance to find them and sample their creations easily.

The food on offer varies on a daily basis but when I visited there was a heavy Latin American influence that I'm not going to complain about. Armed with camera, cash (although unnecessary as the park has its own free ATM machine) and a magazine, I start an early tour de force around the lot. Tacos al pastor and beef tongue tacos from Tacos el Tuca bear the heady smokiness of a barbeque and are lifted by fresh hot tomatillo and coriander sauce. A green pepper and Oaxaca cheese tamal from Alicia's Tamales Los Maya is warming and comforting against the bitter morning wind of the Bay. I follow with the jewel of my taco eating adventure: a tangy and layered TaiChi tofu taco from Kung Fu tacos; a man-wife team taking its inspiration from Chinese and Mexican culinary traditions. Fusion, frankly, doesn't get better than this. It tastes of what San Francisco is all about: east meeting west and getting wrapped in a flavoursome corn tortilla. Washed down with a glass of sangria lightly spiced with ginger, it's the perfect ending to my lunch break.

If you go to San Francisco, do spend a couple of hours in SOMA with Carlos and his crew. You'll not be disappointed. For more about Carla and her Panamenian/Italian roots, visit her blog 'Can be bribed with food'.

 

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