During the dot-com glory days, restaurants in the design district (that no man's land between Potrero Hill and SOMA) could've cooked up old shoes and dead cats (and some, I think, did) and still had a line around the corner at noon. The dearth of decent lunch spots made Dos Piñas(251 Rhode Island, 252-8220) -- the clean-cut, gourmet burrito-bordering-on-wrap neighborhood restaurant -- a rock star in a group of wannabes, a place so popular that at the height of the boom, you could call in your order an hour ahead and still wait 45 minutes to get it.
Today, some two-plus years after the bust, tumbleweeds blow down 16th and De Haro streets, and you have to draw cobwebs aside every time you enter one of the design showrooms. The overpriced salad-and-sandwich cafes are sad and lonely and the Gift Center looks abandoned, but walk past Dos Piñas and it's like the option-exercising days of Pets.com all over again.
Is it filled with deluded dot-bombers refusing to give up on a last round of venture capital? SOMA workers trying to recapture those halcyon days? Pot Hillers slumming in the flats? Hard to say, but the restaurant still has a loyal following, probably because of Irma's Absolutely Famous Tortilla Soup.
IAFTS is the creation of Irma Aguilar, a former cook at the restaurant. She has since moved on to open her own place, Los Cantaros in Oakland, where you can try not only her Tortilla Soup, but also her equally famous Caldo Tlalpeno, a hearty chicken vegetable broth. Fortunately for us, on this side of the bridge her name and her tortilla recipe live on at Dos Piñas.
"I learned about cooking picante Mexicanafrom my mom and my family in Mexico City," says Aguilar, who came to San Francisco 20 years ago. "I've experimented with many dishes, but people just love the soups."
Rich and hearty, with lots of head-clearing heat (the result of heaps of grilled guajillo and pasilla chilies), IAFTS is the kind of dish you might mistakenly take for a starter -- especially in a burrito joint. Don't. You'll end up giving your barely touched carne asada belly bomb to the guy on the corner begging for spare seed-money.
The soup is a satiating meal in a bowl, pulling ingredients from just about every food group. It begins, says Aguilar, with the sauce, a blend of roasted tomatoes, onions, chilies, and garlic s-l-o-w-l-y reduced to a thick base, giving the broth a roasty smoke-a-roma and a slight sweetness. "If you don't cook the sauce just right," she warns, "the soup is no good." (When pressed about what that means, Aguilar becomes a bit cryptic, giving rise to suspicions that if I tried to replicate IAFTS at home, I'd end up with something more akin to Bonnie's Infamous Charred Tomato and Scorched Chili Soup.) The tomato base is then combined with chicken stock and simmered. When it has festered good and long, Aguilar piles on a vegetable potpourri of zucchini, carrots, corn, and spinach, followed by shredded chicken meat (Dos Piñas has since added rice). Finally, before serving, the soup is topped with fried tortilla strips, avocado, oregano, chopped onion, and lime wedges.
Maybe it's my imagination, but looking around Dos Piñas, the glum and glummer faces of the stock-portfolio-challenged seem to brighten after a bowl of IAFTS. Some, no doubt, are lost in the reverie of the IPO margarita parties that used to take place here. Others have perhaps come to see this spot as a shrine, a white-collar soup kitchen, where survivors sit humble and appreciative of the largess and soul satisfaction that comes from creating something real.
