After the demise of the Underground Market, a bit of a streetside, downlow foodie vacuum has developed in SF. Sure, we’ve still got Off the Grid, Mission Community Market, and for the moment at least, the Free Farm Stand — but it’s not enough food-themed events for a town that rejoices in innovation and knowing what to eat before one’s coworker does. Hot! New! More! Luckily this Sunday there’s ample opportunity to get your locally-sourced snack on, in style.
Street Sweets
A bright-faced gentleman with a messenger bag arrived at our office to drop off samples of the SF-made snacks that will be sold at this pop-up underground dessert market. That clandestine terminology perhaps best described the reasoning behind the “bacon crack” from chocolatiers Nosh This (which also produces homemade limoncello, soups, and Frito pies). Our meat-eating staffers found it “delicious, really delicious,” but give those people salt and pig fat and they’ll eat anything, really.
Also on the menu: raw milk ice cream from Jilli’s. This arrived in darling little jam jars that you can peep on the website, stuffed with the brand’s super-creamy blackberry flavor. Jacky Hayward, owner of Jilli’s, says that she’ll be serving it Sunday with a hot crumble on top and whipped cream. Surely your brain will collapse from all the refined sugar (ours did!) after sampling these PLUS mango blueberry white chocolate masala cookies from baker-blogger Irvin Lin, a.k.a. Eat the Love, the third partner in this secretive sweetfest.
Sign up on the website and you’ll find out where it is on Sat/1. Just don’t tell the New York Times about it, mmkay?
Sun/2 1-6 p.m., free
Undisclosed location, SF
El Mercado
No need to keep this one on the DL: this Latin American-themed food fair is comprised of vendors on the up and up with the Health Department – most notably El Taco Bike, which serves steamed tacos de canasta from the back of a three-wheeled, pedal-powered, self-made contraption, as we reported in our interview with creator and restaurant owner Alfonso Dominguez (vegans take note, a similar operation has been spotted in the Mission).
But it’s not all buche and carnitas. Cerveza and tragos will be available for passers-by, as well as Latin American crafts, live music onstage by DJ Wonway Posibul of the Latin Soul Brothers, Vanessa Ayala, and an acoustic set by badass electro-hip-hop-Latin beatmaker Bang Data. Even an on-site curandera? I mean, tell the New York Times about it already.
Sun/2 noon-6 p.m., free
Era Art Bar and Lounge
19 Grand, SF