50 years after opening, La Taqueria is still getting lines down the block on Mission Street, and has both James Beard honors and “Burrito Bracket” awards to show for its five decades of greasy goodness.

Back nearly ten years ago, when ESPN bought the popular data nerd site FiveThirtyEight, one of the relaunched site’s first big features was the (very effective) clickbait contest of the March Madness-style Burrito Bracket. And the national winner was La Taqueria, the no-frills taqueria at 25th and Mission streets. Naturally, that choice was highly controversial. But there’s no arguing with a James Beard distinction, and La Taqueria won one in 2017 when it was bestowed a James Beard America’s Classics award.  

But as the name of the place would tell you, La Taqueria is more of a cult-favorite for its tacos rather than its burritos. And the Chronicle points out that La Taqueria is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. In a 50-year retrospective article, they profile 80-year-old owner Miguel Jara, and the man who makes those tacos, four-decade employee Miguel Ruiz.

“He’s never missed a single day of work,” the owner Jara said of Ruiz. “Without Miguel over here, I don’t know what we’d do.”

It has not always been a smooth ride. The Chron points out how in  2018, La Taqueria was forced to pay more than $500,000 for wage violations over unpaid overtime, health care costs, and sick pay. And while owner Miguel Jara does own the building at 2889 Mission Street, he had to pay $1.7 million to keep the place later that same year in an inheritance dispute with his siblings.

That unpleasantness is all now long past. And we should acknowledge that Bon Appetit credits La Taqueria with inventing the Mission-style burrito. That too is disputed, as Taqueria La Cumbre makes this claim, as does El Faro (which is different than El Farolito). But what is not disputed is 50 years of San Francisco love for La Taqueria, as evidenced by the long lines on Mission Street during most of its business hours.

Related: La Taqueria Wins Honorary James Beard Award [SFist]

Image: Andy C. via Yelp

The famed “Mission burrito” of El Farolito is making its way to North Beach, a super culinary development that expands the taqueria’s bright yellow SF footprint beyond the Mission District.

The tragic January death of 70-year-old El Farolito founder and owner Salvador “Don Chava” Lopez has not put a stop to the popular taqueria’s burrito-slinging and carne asada chopping. In fact, the chain is now expanding beyond its 12 Bay Area locations, three of which are in San Francisco. The Chronicle reports that El Farolito is opening a North Beach location at 1230 Grant Avenue, taking the “Mission burrito” beyond the Mission District and forging a new destination for late-night drunken hooligan food.

“We hope that we are received like we have been received (and) accepted in the other places we’re at,” Lopez’ daughter Irene Lopez told the Chronicle. The paper says their timeline for opening is “in about two months.”

The new El Farolito location will be near Grant and Columbus Avenues (technically, the location is at Grant and Fresno Street). It’s the space that had been the home of The House for 26 years, and was slated to be the new location of Shuggie’s Trash Pizza, but apparently that discarded-food concept found a different permanent spot in the Mission.

El Farolito did not invent the famed Mission burrito. According to a 2016 Bon Appetit piece, La Cumbre and El Faro (which is separately owned) both make that claim. El Farolito grow out of Taqueria San Jose after a split between Lopez and the co-owners of that spot, and Lopez opened the first El Farolito at 24th and Mission Streets.

Those burritos have been on our brain recently, in light of this week’s Chronicle writeup of local celebrities’ favorite burrito spots. In that piece, El Farolito was the choice of Mythbusters’ Kari Byron, Cable Car Bell Ringing champ Byron Cobb, BART board member Lateefah Simon, and SF public defender Mano Raju. But El Farolito is certainly the favorite of this website — as mid-2000s lore has it, the very idea of SFist was born in an El Farolito.

Related: The 15 Best Burrito Spots In SF [SFist]

Image: Alex R via Yelp

An employee at a Mission District restaurant was rushed to the hospital this morning, after a customer stabbed him over a burrito.

According to the San Francisco Police Department, a man entered a taqueria on the 2200 block of Mission Street, which is between 18th and 19th Streets, at 12:30 this morning. He ordered a burrito. So far, so good, right?

Wrong. Police say that once the man got his burrito, he "fled on foot without paying." A 19-year-old worker from the restaurant gave chase, but when he caught up to the snack snatcher, the miscreant "brandished a knife" and "slashed" the taqueria staffer "in the chest."

The tortilla thief then fled west on 19th, police say.

The restaurant employee, police say, was transported to San Francisco General Hospital for treatment of a non-life-threatening "small puncture wound" to his torso.

The bladed burrito burglar, police say, remains at large.

Apple yesterday released an update to its mobile operating system, iOS 9.1, and while the update included various bug fixes and (we're sure) important upgrades to system functionality, the clear stars of the show are the new emoji. The update brings with it 150 new tiny characters, but the only one we really care about is the burrito emoji. Yes, you can now spam your friends and lovers with the image of that which you hold most dear — the glorious burrito.

The scribes at the Chronicle have very thoughtfully dived right in and determined that some of the newly released emoji will speak directly to Bay Area sensibilities.

Among the 150 new emoji included in the update are two long-awaited foods near and dear to many Bay Area residents: the taco and burrito. Other new additions include a middle finger emoji, hot dog, unicorn, a cheese wedge and an uncorked bottle of champagne.

We in San Francisco can only hope that this is merely a sign of things to come, and that variations of the burrito emoji will begin to appear — a fat El Farolito burrito emoji for when you feel ready to take on the world, for example, or a Chipotle burrito emoji for when you realize that you'll never succeed as an artist and you should just give up and join the 9-to-5 corporate slog already.

If you're just dying to group message your knitting circle images of unicorns staring intently at hot dogs, follow Wired's instructions by going to "Settings > General > Software Update, then choosing download and install, or by connecting your device to your computer and updating via iTunes."

Previously: New Emoji Coming Soon Include Eyeroll Face, Unicorn Face, And Taco

SFGov TV, the SF city media arm, has a running web series called QuickBites, and they've just done a piece on the Mission-style burrito that makes some highly spurious claims.

The big falsehood: The original type of burrito found in Mexico didn't have rice and beans in it at all, as the little diagram in the video suggests. The Mission burrito has that stuff, along with guac and sour cream, but the real, OG burritos were just meat, cheese, and salsa, or meat alone.

ALSO, they start off speaking to Edward Duran, the owner of Taqueria La Cumbre, and granted he's not the only one to lay claim to "inventing" the Mission burrito, but he retells the story about how Michaela Duran, back in 1967, wanted to make a big burrito that provided working people with enough food to get through a whole day, and enforcing the idea that La Cumbre made the first Mission-style burritos.

But I had always heard that Mission burrito dated further back than that, in particular to El Faro at Folsom and 20th. As their legend has it, the owner there, Febronio Ontiveros, made the first, large-sized burrito for a group of firefighters in 1961, using two six-inch flour tortillas because the giant Mission-style tortillas didn't even exist yet. Mexican food historian Gustavo Arellano has supported El Faro's claim to the Mission burrito — and in Arellano's version, which is in his 2012 book Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America, Ontiveros already had the large-sized tortillas because he'd known these kind of burritos from work camps when he first immigrated here, and those tortillas were available at that time in Sonora and Southern Arizona.

The SFGov video does also tell the El Faro story, but they present both legends as equally possible, rather than making any claim to history, and rather than doing some proper research.

Plus, there have to be some SF old-timers around who can settle this. There were Mission burritos before 1967, right old-timers?!

Important information, especially for those who took that whole FiveThirtyEight Burrito Bracket thing seriously: Mission District burrito standby La Taqueria will be closing for three weeks starting on December 22. Gather ye burritos while ye may.

You know all about La Taqueria, of course. The Mission Street restaurant has been a standby on Best Burrito lists for years. From our list, circa 2013:

La Taq sets the gold standard for Mission burritos, and it's been bearing the torch for decades. There's a reason the line is out the door: this spot is the worst-kept secret in town. La Taq's carne asada super burrito is like a religion, and the restaurant's policy of using no rice in their burritos produces a streamlined, taste-concentrated slab. The only controversy? Whether La Taq's burritos or tacos are the superior order.

The place hit a beyond-locals level of fame earlier this year when it was named "America’s Best Burrito" by fledgling data-driven news org FiveThirtyEight:

This burrito’s construction sets it apart. Like many Mission Street burritos, it’s prepared assembly line-style; the sour cream is added liberally from a squirt bottle, guacamole comes by the spoonful from an enormous metal bowl, pico de gallo and all its juices are added at the end. But unlike at other taquerias, each ingredient keeps its juices, making this burrito saucy in form and personality (the absence of rice also makes it noteworthy among its neighbors).

Of course, this crowning caused an inevitable backlash (including on this site), but that didn't matter to all those who appeared to discover the place as a result of their triumph — the place has been regularly jam-packed since their win (well, most of the time).

That's why, though their "renovation vacation" from December 22-January 11 is, Eater SF reports, an annual event, it still bears noting — it seems like a lot of La Taq's patrons weren't around to withstand the closure this time last year.

And that's OK! Just get there this week, and you'll be fine...or, as my esteemed colleague Jay Barmann might tell you, Taqueria Cancun (2288 Mission St), Chavitas on 26th and Mission, Taqueria San Francisco (2794 24th Street) and Taqueria Vallarta (3033 24th Street) are all more-than-acceptable alternatives.

More taquerias should be inspired by Taco Bell. No, not by the fast-food chain's suspect ingredients or testosterone-fueled ad campaigns, but for the unique gastronomic constructs that Taco Bell uses to produce their food-like menu items. Take, for example, this (delicious) monstrosity filled with Fritos. Taqueria La Cumbre on Valencia Street recently started making something sorta, kinda, barely similar: Nachos in a Roll (i.e., a tortilla chip-stuffed burrito), a treat brought to our attention by noted neighborhood blog, Mission Mission. See, for only $5, you can get nachos stuffed inside a flour tortilla with either grilled chicken, steak or vegetarian along with beans, cheese guacamole, sour cream, and salsa. So basically a burrito with chips inside. And yet? Much more.

We sampled the texturally-enhanced savory roll to see for ourselves if—at last—the chippy addition made San Francisco's gloppy and oversteamed burrito (unfathomably preferred by many) more palatable. It did. Texture can do wonders. While the chips did get a bit soggy, they provided a necessary buffer to the burrito's inherent one-dimensional flavor and greasiness factors. We ordered ours with grilled chicken, regular salsa, and no beans. (Unless they're of the cannellini variety and tinged with rosemary and olive oil, we don't care for beans.) It came to us wrapped nicely in a perfect size portion. Mmm, good.

Our only complaint is that we wanted more chips in our nacho burrito. No wait, we wanted more nacho-flavored chips in our nacho burrito. Rainbow Grocery or Bi-Rite must have some sort of organic, non-Tom's brand of flavored chips that won't sear the roof of one's mouth, yes? That salty kick could have made the nacho burrito the post-binge drinking meal in the Mission. At least for us, anyway.

You can get this filling and carb-loaded treat until the end of January at Taqueria La Cumbre, 515 Valencia (at 16h Street), S.F. Hours: Mon-Sun 11 am - 2 am.

Your SFist Editor does not enjoy burritos. Alas. For our money and tongue, they're just too large, gloppy, tinfoil-y and overloaded. Also, we were forced to eat them twice a week in our youth, so we don't care much for the popular Mexican roll in our adulthood. But, Brad of Meowmix does. Very much so. And he's found a new one to share with you: HRD's Spicy Kim Chee Burrito. From the makers of the Mongolian Beef Cheesesteak Sandwich, the Spicy Kim Chee is filled with Kim chee, korean bbq pork, sour cream, kiwi salsa, and white rice. And it's large. Very large. Read more about it at Meowmix.

No need to bury the lead: the Los Compadres taco truck that does business at Spear & Folsom is yummy. We enjoyed a rather large burrito there recently (pictured above with our fat hand, as to give an idea of the relative size).

Again, burritos = huge, and at five bucks for the basic model, it's not too hard on the wallet. We went for the sour cream, guacamole, and cheese additions on our al pastor (al pastor is our favorite now; thanks again, Dan)), and it was still $6.50 -- practically cheap for lunch in this part of town. Cheaper than nearby, non-mobile (and, in our view, inferior) Poncho Villa, as a matter of fact. The meat was tender and tasty with just a hint of tangy and sweet; the inside mix of ingredients well-distributed, the salsa was hot but not overly so -- we were really quite happy.

('hood, line length, menu art, & final analysis after the jump)