I took a long bike ride one Saturday morning, further south than I’d ever been in San Francisco. Finally, after a wrong turn off of Mission Street somewhere, I happened upon about a dozen trucks and two parallel cement awnings as long as football fields bedecked in graffiti underneath Highway Two Eighty, and more Asian people than I’ve ever come across outside of China Town. This is the Alemany Farmer’s Market.
After milling about and discovering the large variety of fruits, vegetables and eggs for about half the price of the produce at the Ferry Building, I decided this was a market for real people. And I shan't forget to mention the half hatched duck embryos. The large population of toothless families confirmed this. It was surely a nice change from the Gucci adorned crowd of Embarcadero.
Of course there cannot exist a Farmer’s Market without food trucks. El Huarache Loco is number sixty on my list for their authentic Mexican street food, specifically their huarache with cactus salad.
Huarache consists of two masa (corn) based tortillas in the shape of beaver tails, stuffed with refried beans, then lightly fried. Unfortunately, the huarache I ate in this parking lot in Alemany didn’t stand up to the cold humid weather very well: Any crispiness soon diminished to a slightly soggy and chewy huarache. The salad on top was refreshing with crumbled queso fresco, fresh cilantro, and spicy chilies, although the cactus tasted a little like canned green beans.
Ok, so the huarache was not my favorite food item I’ve ever bought from a truck, but if it hadn’t been for El Huarache Loco, I probably never would’ve discovered the wonderful and inexpensive Alemany Farmer’s Market. Since this discovery, I have eaten more juicy peaches, cherries, and tangelo minneolas than I have in the last twenty-four years, and it’s barely made a dent in my wallet.
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