Red Café

(No official website)

2894 Mission Street

Phonicular contact: (415) 282-1515
  

 

(This guy does a great Jimmy Fallon impersonation.)


I had heard some good stuff (reviews on yelp*, etc.) about Red Café (located on the corner of Mission and 25th Streets, in the Mission District ~ I would add "naturally", but Mission Street actually transverses the entire City and goes from Downtown/South of Market Area all the way to Daly City, and then some) and finally got around to eating desayuno there. This is a little Mexican-style, family-owned diner (not so sure why it isn’t called Café Rojo, which I am going to refer to them as from here on out). They had the "Café" avec accent aigu/con acento agudo on their awnings; however, they had it sans/sin on their menu and cards. There are ten counter seats (with black round vinyl-covered stools); three booths (with burgundy red and speckled black vinyl-covered seats) for two; four booths for four; and three tables for four. I got there early (as soon as it had opened), but I heard that it fills up quickly on the weekends and usually has lines waiting to get in.

As this is primarily a "Breakfast" joint (it states just that on their awnings), Café Rojo offers a very nice selection of breakfastary dishes. They have six different stupid vegetarian omelettes: Loroco[1] Omelette and Nopal (cactus) Omelette to name a few that looked rather interesting; plus another seven omelettes of the dead, decaying animal flesh variety, which could always be ordered sin carne muerta de animales en descomposición. Additionally, they have many other typical Mexican breakfast dishes: Huevos Rancheros and Huevos a la Mexicana. Unlike yesterday's omission on the printed menu at La Cucina, Café Rojo even offers a "Mickey" Pancake for los niños (and specify that it's for "Under 12 only"; I was sure glad that I went there alone so that it was an option still open for me; I didn't see any place where they could seat a dozen people together, anyway).

However, as whenever I go to a new ristorante italiano, Brenda and Eddy, I try to rate the place by their Parmigiana di melanzane or gnocchi; subsequently, whenever I eat at a new Mexican place for breakfast, I like to try the chilaquiles. Café Rojo state that their Chilaquiles are "(Tortilla mix with eggs) ~ (re)fried beans, sour cream, green pepper, tomato, onion (no hashbrowns, toast or tortillas)". I also had a large glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice. Once again, I forewent the doggone cuppa coffee at the restaurant and brewed me up a nice cuppa Bettys Ceylon Blue Sapphire (Truly thank you very much, Cindy!) when I got home, and am enjoying it while I type-up this stupid 'blog-entry. This is probably one of the best teas I have ever had, even I can't mess this one up as it only comes in a loose-leaf form and has to be brewed fresh; it really needs no addition of sugar or cream/milk, as the flavour is already naturally sweetened and light enough.

This was a decent enough version of chilaquiles (which as I have stated before is basically scrambled eggs with tortilla chips and other junk mixed in). I have found that, like in most Italian restaurants when you order tiramisù for dessert, you can get an entirely different version wherever you go. Both SanJalisco™ and Chavas (which, as you like it, Wild Bill,  is my touchstone for chilaquiles, as it was the first place that I ever had them when I first moved to San Francisco; see 'blog-entry from August 8th, 2010 for more information) make theirs with a more red-saucy base (which reminds me, both of those places really need another visit one of these days). Café Rojo makes theirs with no added salsa in the scramble, but serve it with a side of home-made tomatillo salsa, which was pretty flavourful on its own, to pour on top. The (re)fried beans were more of a purée (avec accent aigu, by the way) of frijoles refritos and I ended up pouring them on top as well. The orange juice was indeed fresh-squeezed and not from a bottle, too. I had thought about getting a side order of hashbrowns, but waited until the chilaquiles came out to see if it was going to be too much food; it didn't look like it would have been, but I still bypassed the potatoes this morning.

Café Rojo has as condimentary supplements both Tabasco® and Tapatío®, as well as the ubiquitous bottles of ketchup, but, thankfully, none of that vile white goop known as mayonnaise (of which, you can expect a separate rant… er, 'blog-entry explaining that remark); I really was expecting a more varied and better selections from a Mexican place, though. It really didn't matter as the chilaquiles came with the above-mentioned tomatillo salsa which had a very good flavour and I used it on half of the chilaquiles. On the other half of the chilaquiles, I used some of my own Sweet Heat Hot Sauce (Thanks again, Cindy!) and just a soupçon[2] of One Stop Hot Shop 'Smart Arse'® (Not really thanks, Cindy!) to give it a bit of a kick.

This is definitely worth a return trip to try another one of their desayuno dishes.


Glen Bacon Scale Rating:  Chilaquiles ~ 6.5


[1] They have "loroco" translated as "green onions" on their menu; however, loroco isn’t a member of the onion family and really don't taste anything like onions. I have had these in pupusas in the past and know I liked them. Here is a little more detailed information stolen from… er, borrowed from our friends at Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loroco

[2] Stupid, useless cunning linguist pointer of the day:
 
"Soupçon" is French for "suspicion"; it comes from Middle French "sospeçon", from Late Latin "suspection-" (stem of "suspectio"), for Latin "suspicio" meaning "suspicion".