Las Palmeras is our current favorite place to eat in San Francisco’s Mission district. Offering both Mexican and Salvadoran food, Las Palmeras is a simple, inexpensive restaurant. This is not the sort of place you go to for the decor, although the Frida Kahlo prints are nice to look at (I always have to fight the urge to straighten the crooked one on the center wall). On the weekend, the clientele is mostly local families out for a meal while strolling musicians strum traditional tunes on a guitar. The service is casual but effective. There’s no hovering, but the food arrives promptly and a server stops by periodically to make sure everything is OK.
But service and ambience are, frankly, irrelevant. The food is the draw. My favorite dish so far is the yuca frita con chicharron, or fried cassava root with pork, a typical Salvadoran dish, according to the menu. This dish is a perfect marriage of flavors and textures. Chunks of yuca are deep fried, leaving them soft yet firm on the inside, and crisp and golden on the outside. The pork pieces are similarly deep-fried a crisp brown, remaining tender on the inside. While the pork is salty, the yuca is slightly sweet with a potato-like texture that offsets the density of the pork. A slightly piquant red sauce complements the dish perfectly, as does a mound of pickled cabbage salad that cuts the fat in the dish and refreshes the palate. When fried to perfection, yuca frita con chicharron is great fun to eat and not very greasy at all. Of the three times I’ve eaten this dish at Las Palmeras, I was disappointed once when the pork was dry on the inside and the yuca was greasy. I don’t know whether this was a result of a problem with the fryer, or an inexperienced replacement cook. In any case, it seems to have been a one-off occurrence. Yuca frita con chicharron remains my favorite item on the menu.
Another dish I’ve enjoyed at Las Palmeras is salpicon, a kind of salad made of shredded beef with chopped mint, onions, and radishes served with rice and lime. This dish is a joy. The combination of mint and beef is a vibrant delight, the mint enlivens the entire dish and the onions and radish add a bit of crunch and bite. A good squeeze of lime brings the dish together, adding tanginess and that distinctive lime flavor. Simple rice is a good foil for this complex combination of tastes. The only thing I found missing was a bit of heat, green or red chilis would have added another layer of complexity to this lovely dish. I don’t know whether this version of salpicon was adjusted to the relatively mild tastebuds of most gringos, or if that’s just the way they make salpicon in El Salvador. On the other hand, my favorite Thai dish is a salad made of very similar ingredients, so I may have been projecting southeast Asian sensibilities onto an entirely different cuisine. Still, the salpicon was very tasty.
A hot mug of corn starch atole is a fine finale to the meal, especially on a cold, windy San Francisco night. This is a thick, sweet, warming drink that sticks to your ribs. Las Palmeras serves atole with corn kernels and a spoon so you can eat it like a pudding or sip it slowly.
Finally, the bill is very reasonable. Our dinner for two, including salpicon, chili relleno, a pupusa, warm tortillas, and a mug of atole came out to $28, including a 20% tip (plus a tip for the musician). Las Palmeras is a good place to go for a simple, tasty Salvadoran meal.
Las Palmeras
2723 Mission Street
(between 23rd & 24th streets)
San Francisco, CA 94110
415-285-7796
Open daily, 8:30am-9:30pm
Cash only
