Here’s the original article in SF Weekly by Meredith Brody:
Primavera
Ferry Building Farmers’ Market, Embarcadero and Market, Saturdays 8 a.m.-2 p.m.
Recipe for a perfect day: Find your way to the Saturday Farmers’ Market at the Ferry Building.
Stand in line at Primavera (it moves quickly, and you might be behind Alice Waters or Calvin Trillin).
Order the chilaquiles (aka Guajillo Chile Chilaquiles con Chorizo), and maybe a tamale or two on the side, but definitely the chilaquiles: sauce-coated cut-up tortillas sided with scrambled eggs, crumbled chorizo, refried beans dusted with queso, sour cream, chopped onion, cilantro, and diced ripe avocado.
It’s a perfect plate of food for $9.50 in green, red, and white — the colors of the Mexican flag — and one bite is enough to make you want to salute it.
Take your prize to a table or a bench overlooking the bay, and forget all your cares and woes — at least while you’re eating.
Hayes Street Grill and Vicolo Pizza
Ferry Building Farmers’ Market, Embarcadero and Market,Saturdays 8 a.m.-2 p.m.
The Hayes Street Grill was the first food stand invited to join the Ferry Plaza Farmers’ Market in 1991, and helped raise the funds necessary to start the market by selling spicy grilled corn on the cob.
Today its rotating seasonal menu, sourced from the surrounding purveyors, features offerings such as eggs scrambled with wild mushrooms ($6.50), crab cake with mixed greens ($10), a fried-oyster po’ boy ($8.50), a salmon BLT with tartar sauce ($10), and almost always a superb classic BLT (with Hobbs bacon and local lettuce and tomatoes from the market, bien sûr, on baguette, $6). The fresh-squeezed orange juice is a bargain at $2.
A couple of weeks ago the highlight was a perfectly sautéed soft-shell crab sandwich ($11), crunchy, juicy, saline, and altogether divine.
Pick up a cornmeal crust Vicolo pizza for dinner from the adjoining stand. The staff all work at the classically San Francisco and deservedly popular Hayes Street Grill.
El Tonayense taco trucks
Three locations on Harrison (at 14th, 19th, and 22nd sts.), Daily 10 a.m.-10 p.m.
There are no better tacos, burritos, tortas, and quesadillas available anywhere in the Mission than those served up at one of El Tonayense’s three immaculate trucks strung out along Harrison like the pearls they are.
The list of succulent braised meats reads like pure poetry: carne asada, al pastor, carnitas, lengua, cabeza, sesos, tripita, buche, pollo, pollo asado.
The English translation might give the less adventurous some pause (beef, pork, fried pork, tongue, head and cheeks, brains, tripe, neck, chicken, grilled chicken), but even the squeamish have been known to exclaim with delight after trying some of the less-familiar organ meats.
Tacos are $1.75 each (with meats, salsa, and chopped onions heaped on two small corn tortillas, with a couple of radishes, pickled carrots, and a wedge of lime). The price goes up to $5.50 for the Super Torta and $6 for the Super Burrito.
