Tequila is one of those drinks that people always say that they hate because they got too drunk on it taking shots of Jose Cuervo in college or having too many sugar-laden homemade margaritas using cheap margarita mix. I have to say that I too was once in that boat. However, as I became older and my palate more refined, I have learned to love the wonders of tequila. In my youth, little did I know that tequila is just one type of mezcal made specifically from the blue agave plant that is primarily grown in the Tequila region of Mexico. I have thus expanded my knowledge of the agave drink into the more generic mezcal which, in my opinion at least, some varieties are in all ways superior to tequila. And much like Scotch whiskies, the flavor profiles range from smoky to sweet to anywhere in between. Mezcal has become quite a staple in my drinking repertoire, so much so that I find myself drawn toward it when I see it on a cocktail menu. Because of this, I knew that I would have to try to get to Mezcalito to see if would become one of my new favorite places in San Francisco as it names itself after one of my favorite drinks and has an interesting looking Mexican food menu to boot. (I also wanted to try the burger for The Great Burger Hunt, but it wasn’t in the cards on this specific journey.)
Now, perhaps we chose the wrong night to come. We had some friends in town visiting around the holidays (well, they were in town for a Christmas party with their work, and they managed to squeeze us in), and since we knew we were going to be spending the day hanging out with a few drinks, we decided we should go out to dinner after they left us for their party. So I booked us into Mezcalito on a Saturday night. That particular Saturday night also just happened to be the night of the SantaCon in San Francisco. And for those of you who don’t know, SantaCon is an annual event where people dress up like Santa and go bar hopping and get incredibly drunk and sometimes do horribly privileged things (like getting arrested for vandalism at a restaurant). So when we arrived for our booking, the place was quite full with Santas drinking at the bar. This also made the venue quite loud as there were lots of people and the music was incredibly loud. Which honestly, leads to a pretty bad dining experience because you can’t hear people and you feel like you’re eating in a nightclub. It’s a small venue, and I can understand that they want a bar and a restaurant, but with such a size, I think you have to choose one or the other because with both, it just makes for a bad bar experience AND a bad dining experience, so the atmosphere is pretty poor.
We were seated and decided to order a couple of cocktails. Sadly though, while the cocktail list was large, everything read like it was going to be ridiculously sweet. We did find two that looked interesting and not too sweet, and while they were nice, they weren’t really drinks we wanted to order for the rest of the night, so we switched to wine. (By the way, the wine list is small, so don’t expect anything amazing.) It was also a bit strange because we ordered the cocktails and a small plate of ceviche right when we sat down, and they seemed like they took forever to arrive. And they tried to deliver the cocktails to a different table. And wouldn’t believe us when we said the cocktails were ours. And they left with them only to return with them a few minutes later. We also finally ordered that bottle of wine (which then arrived incredibly quickly) and sopes de picadillo (sopes with shredded beef), carnitas quesadilla and the cochinita pibil (pibil pork cooked in a banana leaf).
At this point, we were still waiting for our ceviche to arrive while tables that had come in after us were already receiving food. So it seems like perhaps there was something weird going on in the kitchen that night. Our ceviche finally arrived, and we dug in. It was nice, but I’ve had much better ceviche in my life. But now, even though we ordered the rest of our food about 15 minutes after the ceviche, all our other dishes started storming the table. It grew quite difficult to put all the plates on the table, and it was really frustrating because it felt like they had no idea about how to pace food coming out to a table when people order plates to share. It was a bit of a dump and run to be honest, which was also annoying because we had barely gotten started on our wine.
But how did it all taste? I actually really enjoyed the flavors of almost everything. The beef in the sopes had a really delicious flavor and the shell was the perfect combination of slightly crunchy on the outside and soft in the middle. The quesadilla was made with a thick, homemade tortilla, and the carnitas were really well cooked and delicious. The salsa it was served with was also really smoky and incredibly tasty. The pibil also had fabulous flavor, so I was really pleasantly happy with all the food. Except for the fact I felt like we had to devour it all before it got cold since they brought so many hot plates to our table all at once. Given the weird service we had been receiving, we decided that it was probably best to call it a night and just finish our wine and pay.
So Mezcalito really left me with mixed feelings. While it has some fantastic Mexican food that was more flavorful than a lot of places I’ve been to in San Francisco, the service and atmosphere really put a damper on our entire evening. It was nearly impossible to hear each other, and being rushed through our food was not fun either. While I may return myself for the burger, I really don’t see us returning for another proper meal, which is sad, because I really wanted to like the place. It needs to be a bar or a restaurant, but not both, and trying to do it all really makes for a less-than-stellar dining experience.
Score: 3/5
Recommendations: Most of the food is great, but I don’t know when to go to get it!
Mezcalito
2323 Polk Street
San Francisco, CA 94109
