San Francisco street food? Follow your nose, and Twitter

Magic Curry Man. Sexy Soup Cart. Creme Brulee Man. Amuse Bouche. No, these are not budding chefs at Burning Man camps — at least not to my knowledge. Rather, they seem to be leaders of a cutting-edge food movement in San Francisco, serving up budget-priced treats from food carts that liven up forgotten blocks and back alleys in the Mission district.

SF Weekly’s SFoodie blogger Tamara Palmer has been among the curious and hungry sampling the carts about the neighborhood of late, and offerings have included $5 Thai green curry, $3 tarts, $3 creme brulees. The Sexy Soup Cart reportedly served up organic asparagus soup on a recent Friday.

S.F. blogger Gene Miguel has tried a handful of Creme Brulee Man’s wares. For the unseasoned, he recommends the vanilla bean variety: “Perfect for creme brulee newbies, it has enough vanilla flavor without being too sweet or overwhelming,” he blogged.

In my opinion, the two best ways you can liven up the San Francisco visitor experience are by taste-testing the city’s varied edible offerings and by strolling about outdoors. Now you can perform both actions in one fell swoop by chasing around food carts.

On Twitter, you can follow the wanderings of the aforementioned vendors mentioned by SFoodie: Magic Curry Man, Sexy Soup Cart, Creme Brulee Cart and Amuse Bouche SF.

And yes, I know that we here in Los Angeles have an underground street-food phenomenon of our own going, though we being Angelenos, the buzz among twitterers seems to be more on food-carting trucks than actual carts. There’s the Kogi Korean BBQ truck, the sushi-rolling Yuri Truck and more, and the list is growing.

In L.A., S.F. and elsewhere, are stationary dining establishments going the way of the wristwatch? I hope not, but I like this new trend of eating on the go.

— Susan Derby, Special to the Los Angeles Times

[Photo credits: Gene Miguel of Hoodscope]

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This entry was posted on Saturday, May 30, 2009 at 12:02 pm by Susan Derby and is filed under Africa & Middle East. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.