This week, I share experiences at two newcomers playing with the boundaries of Asian cuisine. One is a pop-up turned hip, new Mission district restaurant hidden behind a graffitied wall, Bruce Lee films on two TVs above the bar, striking paintings of birds. The other is a fluorescent-lit, Tenderloin spot, half underground, roomy but utilitarian in design. The former just opened early January 2023, the other two days before Christmas 2022. They are dissimilar in most ways but for their surprising interplay of Asian cuisines.
Piglet & Co.
My unforgettable food and drink travels around Taiwan in 2016 — including Taipei, Taichung and Sun Moon Lake — confirmed the fascinating melange of cultures inherent in Taiwanese food. Yes, it’s oh-so Chinese at core. Yes, there is Japanese influence from Japan’s years ruling the island country (1895–1945). But the food and drink of this small but trend-setting country is neither of those things. It’s Taiwanese in its own unique mashup and evolution.
I grew up with some Tawianese food experience in LA and less so in NYC and SF, but until I visited on home turf, I didn’t really didn’t feel a deeper sense of the playfulness of the country that brought us bubble tea, Taiwanese “snow” and popularized xiao long bao (XLB soup dumplings from Shanghai, gone global after Din Tai Fung first opened in Taipei in 1972, spreading to California and around the world).
Early January 2023, husband-and-wife Chris Yang and Marcelle Gonzales soft opened Piglet & Co. in the Mission in the former Southpaw space, with an official grand opening January 28th. They started with dinner only, while Sunday brunch starts this Sunday, February 19 (11am-3pm). Yang and Gonzales kept things going over pandemic years with pop-up El Chino Grande — ”inspired by the street food culture of Taiwan, influenced by our travels of Asia and Hawaii” — which has evolved into Piglet & Co., though El Chino will continue to pop up at events like Outside Lands.
This modern Taiwanese-inspired food calls on those insane, one-of-a-kind Taipei night markets (which I wrote about here), but employing NorCal ingredients. It’s not traditional Taiwanese, rather touches of China, Japan and Korea (e.g. chashao pork ssam for Korean) play with the couples’ favorites perfected at the pop-up, like Mala BBQ pork ribs.
A menu centerpiece — and one of the most striking dishes visually — is honey walnut shrimp pork toast over rectangular shokupan (Japanese milk bread). Panko-breaded pork and shrimp is drizzled in burnt honey aioli over a candied walnut relish. The flavors are less bold than comforting, with honey walnut mayo a winning Chinese-American touch that reminds me of childhood. Pork fat (“lard confit”)-charred savoy cabbage imparts unctuous depth, partnered with kalo (taro leaves) soubise, an onion-cream-butter sauce. It could easily go flat if it weren’t for a smart chimichurri of mustard greens bringing acidic brightness and contrast.
Kampchi crudo is silky and umami in sesame dashi ponzu sauce, while bits of grilled Brokaw avocado, citrus and Monterey sea beans and seaweed bring contrast. But I was looking for more bold flavors in the doubanjiang (spicy bean sauce, often called “the soul of Sichuan cuisine”) over a heaping plate of roasted cauliflower. Despite the addition of fried dulse (a seaweed) and a barely-detectable shiso verde, the dish tasted more like plain roasted cauliflower. Particularly after my travels in Chengdu, the Sichuan province of China, I am crazy about doubanjiang and its complex layers, loving the version at Palette Tea House, which I keep on stock at home. Piglet’s doubanjiang was not only mild but sparse and in some bites, undetectable.
Triple fried chicken wings are good but likewise lacking in the bold memorableness of other sweet chili chicken wings around SF, even as a subtle spice lingered nicely on the palate. Salted daikon cubes made me wish for pickled daikon as more of a contrasting palate cleanser, while a small but pleasing touch of black sesame cabbage added nuance. I wanted to try the whole steamed Mt. Lassen Trout, but at $65 and just two of us, it would not have allowed us to try multiple other dishes.
Piglet & Co. is facing the sadly usual city and neighborhood woes of waiting for a beer and wine license. So for now it’s all non-alcoholic pours, with the one NA wine option thankfully being a quality one: Leitz Eins Zwei’s (from Germany) blanc de blancs, riesling and sparkling rosé, albeit at a pricey $17 a glass given that the entire bottles cost roughly that.
While I didn’t leave with one dish I’d dream about returning for, service was friendly and amenable (even if the second round of three dishes rushed out too fast all at once). The space is dim, soothing, cool and the vintage Bruce Lee films the right choice to set the tone. I especially like the concept and inspiration of Taiwan’s lively night markets and hope that inspires standout dishes and flavor combos in months to come.
// 2170 Mission Street, www.pigletandco.com
Cantoo Latin Asian Rotisserie
Venezuelan Chinese? There’s a story here and I’m glad I asked on my second visit to grab takeout at Cantoo Latin Asian Rotisserie. Friendly, sweet Christina Wu Feng is co-owner, helping to run the restaurant with her parents as she completes her hospitality degree. Her dad is chef Michael Wu Feng, and her parents immigrated first from Guangzhou, China, to Venezuela years back, before immigrating to SF.
Hence her family’s play with their global story of Chinese and Latin America homes. You’ll find sweet and sour next to mini-arepas, pan-fried pork dumplings next to empanadas. After two visits, everything I’ve tried is sheer comfort with one dish downright excellent.
Living on the coast in Puerto Cabello (near where I stayed on my trip to Venezuela nearly 20 years ago), the region is known for their soup (sopa) Puerto Cabello. Wu Feng recreates this Venezuelan seafood soup, here packed with whole blue crab, head-on shrimp, calamari, tilapia fish filet, clams, mussels and cilantro. As with their signature rotisserie — Pollo Valenciano — the hefty soup is accompanied with mini-arepas and wedges of lime. The rotisserie is another generous portion (a whole small bird? More than enough for two) for $23, paired with the mini-corn arepas, coleslaw and an addictive green garlic sauce.
Empanadas (filled with meats and black beans) walk the ideal line of crispy and mealy-softness. Chili oil pan-fried pork dumplings are made from scratch (from grinding the meat to the dough/wrappers), exuding just the right amount of Sichuan peppercorn numbing on the tongue. Though oily with vibrant chile oil, they taste fresh, homemade and high quality. Stir-fry beef flat rice noodles were hard not to finish even when I was utterly full — one of the best versions in town, appropriately crunchy with green and grilled onions.
But the dish I was thinking about as soon as I finished it, craving it again for delivery or takeout, is their sweet and sour. It comes in chicken, pork or fish form. I am all about the steal of a $9 sweet and sour fish filet starter. It may not be the life-altering sweet and sour I had at Chez Wong in Lima, Peru, a decade ago, but it is immediately one of the best sweet and sours in all of the Bay Area. The best I’ve had in years. Christina explains the care with which they make this — and so many — dishes. She says it’s their vegetable stock and made-from-scratch sauce that make all the difference. I’d also add that it’s the pitch-perfect, uber crispy, but not at all dry, fry and batter of the fish, too.
Even taking it home, the fish was warm, crispy and perfect out of the box, the sauce so good I literally sopped up every drop. This humble new restaurant may not be much to look at, but it holds heart and kindness from the sweet Wu Feng family. And their menu showcases their unique story of divergent cultures on one plate. You may not think you need arepas and and sweet and sour in the same meal, but turns out you do.
Cantoo will likely stay under the radar given its Tenderloin location and setting. But I hope you go out of your way to order from them. It may just become your new Chinese-Latin favorite.
// 572 O’Farrell Street, www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100088854342106
