New York is simply overrun with them, but San Francisco has surprisingly few. They can be interesting, cozy, and smart when done right, but all too often are just repetitive and trite.
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2351 Mission (at 19th Street), 282-1813. Open Tuesday and Wednesday 5:30 to 10 p.m., Thursday through Saturday 5:30 to 11 p.m. Reservations: couldn't hurt. Parking: possible. Muni: 14, 49, 26, and BART. Noise level: quite loud
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I speak not of pashmina shawls, but of another eerily ubiquitous trend: the Nuevo Latino restaurant. Nuevo Latino, aka Pan-Latin, is a re-envisioning of the Latin food paradigm in which ideas are drawn from all over Latin America and beyond, and then, if all goes well, whipped together into a thoughtful, clever, hip style that may also incorporate French and Asian elements.
The Nuevo Latino Charanga is nestled inconspicuously in the same block of Mission that until recently housed Bruno's. It's brightly decorated, with high ceilings and those little arty touches that mark a restaurant as a labor of love, while a minimal outdoor dining area occupies what would otherwise be a wide entryway. The clientele is made up mostly of Mission dwellers, it seems, with few of the out-of-neighborhood patrons one sees at other new Mission restaurants. Perhaps the Pan-Latin angle isn't distinct enough from plain old Mission Mexican to seem exciting to those visitors; at any rate, I'm sure Charanga's loyal patrons are thrilled to have the place to themselves.
The flavors are Pan-Latin; the format is tapas. No -- not tapas, the menu corrects us -- "raciones, which are larger than traditional tapas." It's true: Three dishes split two ways are probably plenty to fill you up, and, unlike traditional tapas, most of these plates are comprised of a central meat with a vegetable on the side. No dish is more than $10. To drink, there are about 10 inexpensive wines, including some from Spain and Chile. Each is available by the glass or bottle, except for the prize of the cellar, the Pine Ridge merlot '96, of which a whole bottle only may be ordered at $30, for that special night. A good selection of familiar connoisseur's micro- and import beers, as well as sangria, is also available.
Charanga's food is certainly bursting with flavor, as the phrase goes, but in many cases dishes are just not as delicious as they could be. Some of the meat used is not of the highest grade, and sometimes a couple of strong flavors will dominate a plate without any real counterpoint or supporting notes. There are, however, dishes that are just right. The picadillo ($8) is rife with Cuban flavors of cumin, green pepper, onion, annatto, and garlic. The ground beef is not as sweetly raisiny as usual, nor quite as punchy, but the fried maduros compensate, and the black beans and rice round out the experience, making it hearty and satisfying. Mushrooms sautéed with sherry and garlic ($5.75) carry out their assigned role admirably, tart and zingy and pungent with parsley. And the seafood stew ($10) is wonderfully savory, its thin, piquant broth densely populated with fish, squid, shellfish, plantains, tomatoes, and vegetables.
Other plates misfire slightly. The vegetable risotto ($8) seems to hail from some non-risotto-making country: It is watery rather than creamy, and somewhat in need of salt. Its flavors of mushroom, garlic, leek, and broccoli are sound but very faint -- pretty much every other dish on the menu is spicier, and if this risotto is eaten after one of them, it will taste like little more than rice paste. It's not a bad dish, but it is unable to speak up for itself in this clamorous environment. The grilled pork chop ($9.75) is a bit bland and dryish -- not the best pork in the world -- and is utterly overwhelmed by the pool of sweet 'n' spicy jerk sauce it finds itself in. The end result is little different from eating the sauce plain with a spoon. A better approach would have been to prepare the pork with jerk seasoning in the first place, so that it is not at such a loss when it is thrown into the sauce. This dish comes with tasty mashed potatoes with a lower butter quotient than most.
Roasted tri-tip ($8.75) is a none-too-moist treatment of a none-too-tender cut usually associated with barbecue. This dish has a Southern U.S. aura, which is helped along by the abundant black-eyed peas and sautéed greens. The meat, though it has plenty of flavor, verging on gaminess, is drenched in a tart and somewhat monotonous balsamic-tamarind sauce.
In an era in which a restaurant can be judged largely on the strength of its seared ahi, Charanga's version ($9) falls somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. The treatment is quite interesting: The fish is crusted with faintly bitter pumpkin seed, cooked for mere seconds, and served in quivery, bright fuchsia slices with both Latin chile oil and Asian wasabi cream sauce. The tuna meat is of decent but not wonderful caliber -- as with a number of dishes here, the reasoning seems to have been that strong seasoning will cover for imperfect ingredients. But when the diner takes a helping of tuna without other flavors, a graininess is detectable.
Dessert is simple and not very Latin. The flan ($4.50) is exceedingly mild, without even enough fat to coat the mouth and remove the taste of the preceding course. Like the risotto, it's too subtle for its context, but quite enjoyable solo. Apple crisp ($5.75) and pecan pie ($5.50) are more intense, and of shareable size -- the crisp delicate, with strong apple flavor, and the pie dense and very sweet.
Charanga is a pleasant, serviceable restaurant whose creativity and enjoyable ambience are marred only a little by some dishes that don't quite work the way they're supposed to. In other words, if it's boisterous conversation, drink, and food you seek -- in that order -- Charanga is perfect.
