San Francisco restaurant scene.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
The stock for Tacobar's sopa de tortilla ($7.95) is salty and homestyle thin ― you can imagine the stockpot with its breached chicken carcasses shuddering in back on the prep-kitchen burner ― but it's been fortified with a pasilla purée, kickball red, and with the chiles' characteristic tannins and tabacco-leaf taste. Diced soup vegetables (carrot, celery, potato, tomato) lurk at the bottom ― the odd cube of grilled chicken, too ― but the heart of any tortilla soup is, well, its tortillas, cut in long strips and deep-fried. It's the lump of crèma that has the greater effect here: It dissolves, eventually, into the broth, enriching it, till by the end of the bowl, when you figure it's easier just to lift the whole thing and put your lips to the rim, you're left with some flickering recollection of cream of tomato.
Tacobar: 2401 California (at Fillmore), 674-7745.
Follow us on Twitter: @sfoodie. Contact me at John.Birdsall@SFWeekly.com
