San Francisco has one of the largest Japanese communities in the United States. The first Japanese immigrants arrived in the city in 1869 in search of economic opportunities and better living conditions, and just one year later, the U.S. Japanese Consulate was established. Though there were only 33 Japanese immigrants living in California at the time, this number grew to 79,000 in less than 40 years.
Early immigrants settled in Chinatown and the South of Market (SoMa) neighborhoods, where they set up businesses and built a community. After the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, the community relocated to the South Park and Western Addition neighborhoods, which is where the city’s famous Japantown is located.
Today, San Francisco is home to a vibrant Japanese community, with many restaurants celebrating Japanese culture and heritage. Here, we’ll take a look at some of our favorite Japanese dishes you can find in the city.
Ramen
One of the most ubiquitous Japanese dishes is a piping hot bowl of ramen, a noodle soup dish typically comprised of sliced pork, scallions, menma (bamboo shoots), nori (seaweed), and a boiled egg. The broth is usually made with a rich soy sauce or miso base, which adds to its sweet, savory, and umami flavors.
There are thousands of ramen variations in Japan and all over the world, and San Francisco restaurants are known for putting their unique twists on the classic dish. Its origins can be been traced back to 400 CE, when Chinese immigrants arrived in Japan. At the time, the dish was called shina soba (which translates to Chinese noodle), but eventually, the Japanese replaced the name with ramen, which translates to pulled noodles. It gained popularity during Japan’s industrial revolution in the late 19th century when salarymen (Japanese white-collar workers) ate in ramen restaurants due to their affordability and comforting food.
Today, ramen is one of the most popular Japanese dishes worldwide. Making it is an art and can take several days, but you can achieve a similar version at home by making a simple broth out of sautéed aromatics, bone broth, and dried mushrooms, then adding ramen noodles and toppings. It’s the perfect comfort dish for cold San Francisco nights.
If you want to try authentic restaurant-quality ramen yourself, order a bowl from Shef Jerry, who offers tonkotsu miso ramen and vegetarian spicy miso ramen for those going meat-free. Jerry hopes to make authentic Japanese flavors and techniques accessible to everyone in his community.
Katsudon
Katsudon, an essential dish in Japanese food culture and tradition, consists of a crispy breaded pork cutlet atop a bed of warm rice. It’s often served with tonkatsu sauce, made of beef stock, soy sauce, mirin, and sugar. Despite the dish’s simplicity, each bite is packed with rich flavor and textural contrast, and it’s no surprise that it’s a popular comfort meal among locals in San Francisco. Its name comes from the Japanese combination of tonkatsu (pork) and donburi (large bowl), and it’s thought to have been invented in the early 1920s by a Japanese high school student. Today, Japanese students enjoy a bowl of katsudon the night before their exams, as katsu also means “to win!”
Eager to give it a try? Head over to Shef.com and order this dish from Shef Jared, whose tonkatsudon is a favorite amongst his customers, and an absolute must-try if you’re in San Francisco.
Udon Noodle Soup
In its simplest form, udon noodle soup is made with a Japanese soup stock (dashi) seasoned with Japanese soy sauce, mirin, sugar, and sake. It’s then mixed with thick udon noodles, which are made from wheat flour and salt. Another distinct feature is that this dish can be enjoyed either hot or cold!
Legend has it that the first udon recipe was created after a monk brought wheat milling culture and technology to Japan in 124 AD, which aided in the production of udon noodles. As the wheat milling process spread throughout the country, so, too, did the popularity of udon. Today, you can find Japanese restaurants all over San Francisco serving their own version of udon noodles. But you also can’t go wrong with homemade udon!
Shef Masa is a local food safety-certified cook in San Francisco who learned how to cook traditional Japanese dishes while growing up in Japan. He aims to share his passion and love for Japanese cuisine with everyone in the city, starting with his vegetable tempura udon. You can order this deeply comforting dish on Shef.com, delivered fresh to your door!
San Francisco’s rich and diverse culture can be experienced through its art and music scenes, its architecture, and, of course, its food. Mexican culture in particular has greatly influenced the city, thanks to the large Hispanic population and the history between Spanish America and Mexico.
Many Mexicans came to San Francisco during the California Gold Rush in the mid-19th century, bringing with them their culinary traditions and recipes. By the early 20th century, Mexican restaurants and food stands had become a common sight, and as more Mexicans migrated to the city in the 1940s and 50s, the demand for Mexican food continued to grow.
The Mission District quickly became the center of the Mexican community, and to this day you’ll find boutiques, murals, fruit markets, panaderias (bakeries), and taquerias (taco stalls) helping keep the Mexican and Latin American cultures alive. But the love for Mexican food can be felt throughout the entire city, with a wide variety of restaurants serving dishes from across Mexico. Here, we’ll dive deeper into some of the most popular ones.
Tamales
A tamale is a traditional Mesoamerican dish that typically consists of masa (a type of dough made from corn) filled with meat, cheese, vegetables, or chilies, then wrapped in a corn husk before being steamed or boiled.
Its origins can be traced back to the ancient civilizations of Mexico in 8,000 B.C. In fact, tamales are considered the first Mesoamerican dish to be made of corn. Thanks to their portability and protein-packed contents, tamales were often taken into battle by Aztec warriors.
Tamales were introduced to California in the 1870s, where they were sold in street carts. Fast forward to today, and tamales are now table fare for special occasions like Christmas, New Year’s Day, and the Day of the Dead. However, you can always order piping hot tamales from the many food trucks and restaurants around the city.
If you don’t have time to make your own, Shef Sonya offers several varieties of the classic Mexican dish. Her main culinary influences come from Guanajuato and Durango, and her tamales are a reflection of her family’s culture.
Chile Relleno
A chile relleno, which translates to “stuffed chili,” is a whole poblano chili stuffed with minced meat, coated in an egg batter, and fried.
Though the use of chili peppers in Mexican cuisine can be traced back to ancient Mesoamerican civilizations, the modern chile relleno is thought to have originated in the Mexican state of Puebla in the 16th century. Many believe it was made by a group of nuns to honor Mexican’s victory over France during the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862. Today, the dish is served to celebrate and honor Mexico’s Independence Day on September 16th.
Can’t wait to get your hands on some? If you’re in San Francisco you can have them delivered straight to your door, including Shef Tania’s chile relleno with ground beef. Born and raised in Cancun, Mexico, Shef Tania grew up watching and learning how to cook authentic Mayan and Mexican dishes from her family. This inspired her to pursue a culinary career with the goal of sharing her heritage through her food.
Tres Leches Cake
There’s always room for dessert, especially when it’s tres leches. The popular treat consists of a rich sponge cake that’s been soaked in three types of milk — giving it its signature melt-in-your-mouth texture — and topped with meringue or whipped cream.
The exact origins remain a mystery — the closest documentation is a 19th-century recipes for antes, a sherry-soaked cake from Sinaloa and Oaxaca — but it’s clear that Mexico has the strongest ties to it. Nowadays, tres leches is celebration dish across Central America, and you’ll also find it served in Mexican restaurants across San Francisco, where chefs have fun experimenting with all sorts of flavor variations.
If you’re searching for tres leches cake in San Francisco, try Shef G. Ahmania’s light and spongy café con leches tres leches cake! It’s one of her most popular desserts and a crowd favorite, perfect for celebrations.
Ask any Thai native to name a few of their favorite comfort food dishes, and pad kra pao will surely make the list. Its origins can be traced back to the mid-1900s, when street vendors would serve stir-fried dishes on street carts. It wasn’t long before pad kra pao became a local favorite in Thailand and beyond.
Traditionally, pad kra pao is made by stir-frying minced pork or chicken with garlic, shallots, and Thai bird’s eye chilis. The fragrant and spicy stir-fry is then combined with a mixture of soy sauce, oyster, and fish sauce. Finally, a handful of fresh holy basil is added for aromatics and to balance out the intense flavors. It’s typically served with steamed jasmine rice and a fried egg.
The resulting dish is deeply flavorful, spicy, and well-balanced — aka a perfect representation of Thai cuisine. Today, pad kra pao can be found all over Thailand and in restaurants across the world.
Pad Thai
Pad Thai is the official national dish of Thailand. Served in restaurants, corner cafes, and street vendors all across the country, this influential dish has found its way onto menus around the world. Pad Thai first emerged in the early 20th century, when Thailand suffered a rice shortage due to World II. The Thai government took swift action to encourage local communities to eat more noodles, even sharing recipes with restaurants and giving free food carts to vendors willing to sell Pad Thai in the streets. This powerful movement turned Pad Thai from a small food campaign to one of the most beloved dishes all around the world.
Pad Thai is typically made with rehydrated rice noodles, dried shrimp, firm tofu, and eggs stir-fried with garlic, shallots, and a choice of protein. Its signature sweet and sour flavor profile comes from tamarind juice and palm sugar. After being cooked in the wok, the dish is often finished with fresh bean sprouts, sliced chilis, and chopped peanuts. As with any influential dish, there are many variations of this classic recipe. Today, Pad Thai remains one of the most popular dishes eaten in Thailand and all around the world.
Som Tum
When you think of salad, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? Probably not papaya. But unlike the leafy salads of other cuisines, Thailand’s signature dish of som tum is made of exactly that. It’s a popular dish in Thailand’s northeastern region of Issan, and food historians believe it was influenced by the country of Laos, where several other variations of papaya salad exist. However, the Thai interpretation has made its way into shops and restaurants all over Thailand and beyond.
The dish starts off with unripe green papaya. The fruit is sliced into thin crunchy strips that act as the main base for the salad. The slices are tossed into a mortar and pestle with ingredients like dried shrimp, cherry tomatoes, and long beans. As the ingredients are smashed and mixed, fresh lime juice, chopped peanuts, and fish sauce are added to create a sour, salty, spicy, and bitter flavor. The combination of different textures and deep flavors makes som tum an electrifying dish of unique taste sensations.
Tom Yum
Tom yum is Thailand’s most famous soup. It was first documented in the 1800s in Central Thailand, where an aromatic seafood-based soup was described as sour and spicy. Over the years, ingredients like fresh vegetables and herbs were added, and today, variations can be found all over Southeast Asia.
Generally served as a starter dish to “prepare the palate,” tom yum is a spicy, sour soup made with fresh aromatics like lemongrass, galangal, and kaffir lime leaves and seasoned with fish sauce, lime juice, and minced Thai chili peppers. Proteins like chicken, shrimp, or seafood are added to the infused broth, and the whole thing is garnished with fresh cilantro before serving. Even as the recipe continues to evolve, its iconic sour and spicy broth remains a hallmark in Thailand’s food culture and beyond.
If your mouth is watering just as much as ours, order some Thai food from our local community of chefs.
The food and restaurant scene in Seattle, Washington is thriving — and satisfying the cravings of both residents and visitors alike. With diverse restaurant options and large food markets such as the famous Pike Place Market, food lovers can eat their way through Seattle and try both local and international cuisines. Of course, it’s also the birthplace of Starbucks.
Seattle’s food scene experienced a turning point after the World’s Fair in 1962. (Fun fact: Seattle’s iconic Space Needle restaurant resulted from this exposition). The fair introduced delicious international cuisine to the city, with Belgian waffles being the most popular. Seattle locals fell in love with German, Mexican, Thai, French, Creole, Korean, and Japanese cuisines, and in turn became more adventurous with their diets. International restaurants began popping up around the city, and Piers 50 and 51 became lined with exciting new places to eat.
The most authentic way to experience the culinary history of Seattle is to be invited into the kitchen of a local — or get homemade food delivered to your door. This experience will allow you to taste generations-old recipes that have evolved to adapt to the ingredients of the Pacific Northwest. From Shef Tirhas’s Ethiopian Chicken Stew to Shef Samuel’s Salvadorian Papusas — this is the taste of Seattle.
In his 1949 book La Méditerranée, French historian Fernand Braudel (1902-1985) identified the Mediterranean “trinity” of olives, the grapevine, and wheat. Here, we’ll explore the origins of each.
Olives
An olive tree has been standing in Athens’ Acropolis for over 2500 years; in Greek mythology, the goddess Athena planted that tree herself. In Rome, an inscription near the Temple of Portunus mentions Hercules Olivarius — or Hercules of the Olive Merchants — aptly reflecting the grand role of olives in the commerce of the time. Today, olive oil production plays a key role in the agricultural trade of the Mediterranean region, with Spain, Italy, Greece, and Portugal leading the production charts.
Olive oil is typically nicknamed “liquid gold” for its nutritional properties. It’s a hallmark of Ancel Keys’ framework for a Mediterranean Diet and is highly lauded for its healthy, monounsaturated fat.
The Grapevine
Wine enjoys a long, long history, with the oldest evidence of its making dating prior to the Neolithic period. Ancient wine trade routes continue to be unclear, but evidence has shown that in the eastern Mediterranean region, Phoenicians maintained viticulture traditions that, along trade routes, moved to the Western Mediterranean and strongly enriched existing practices.
Various book evidence from the Greco-Roman Period has provided insight into the ancient consumption of wine. In the collection of Roman recipes “Apicius” (ca. 900 AD), an unknown author shares various recipes that employ the use of the grape. Amongst them is “Conditum Paradoxum,” a spiced wine recipe with honey, pepper, saffron, mastich, and laurel leaves. The author also shares recipes for the rose wine “Rosatom” and the violet wine “Violatium.”
When wine ferments, it produces an acetic acid bacteria that is excellent for destroying microorganisms and thus delaying food’s shelf life — making wine an asset in more ways than one. Apicius also mentions the use of vinegar to preserve oysters, fried fish, fruits, and vegetables. In ancient Rome, a mix of water and vinegar called “Posca” was consumed by the army and poorer citizens for hydration.
Cereals
While the consumption of cereals most certainly isn’t unique to the Mediterranean region, the wheat genetic diversity across the Mediterranean Basin is wide. Pasta, bread, rice, and couscous: these are all essentials across different Mediterranean countries, and the cuisine would be stripped bare without them and their many variants.
In Egypt and the Levantine countries, flatbread is a staple, typically relying on refined soft wheat flour. In Italy, durum wheat is ground into semolina to make pasta. Similarly, the Maghrebi couscous uses durum. Ancient Egyptians used the emmer grain for bread; it was one of the first crops to be cultivated in the region and is the predecessor to the Italian farro.
Wheat consumption per capita in the Mediterranean region is especially high. As a source of complex carbohydrates, cereals are a high source of energy for a balanced diet and are particularly important for food security across poorer countries.
The Many Components of a Rich Region
The agricultural trilogy mentioned above is just one framework to simplify a large, complex region into a few shared values. The Mediterranean Basin region offers much more — from vegetables, to legumes, fruits, nuts, meats, and fish and it’s a worthwhile endeavor to explore each country, and even city, as its own rich entity.
Coffee with raw egg yolk? Don’t knock it ‘til you try it! Cà phê trứng, a traditional Vietnamese drink, consists of brewed Vietnamese coffee topped with an airy, sweet cream made of whipped egg yolk and sweetened condensed milk. The result is an aesthetically complex drink with two balanced layers of bold Vietnamese coffee and a meringue-like fluff to thicken and sweeten every sip. It’s an absolute must-try when exploring Vietnamese cuisine, preferably in the mornings when you’re in need of a pick-me-up.
Who Invented Cà Phê Trứng?
Cà phê trứng was invented in 1946 during the Vietnam War by Nguyen Van Giang, a bartender at the Sofitel Legend Metropole Hotel. When dairy was scarce, Giang had the idea to substitute eggs for milk to serve guests light, sweet, and frothy coffee. The emulsion of egg yolk created a light and foamy consistency — just like frothed milk — and local customers loved it. Because of his unique creation, Giang decided to quit his job and open the Giang Café, a coffee shop specializing in his “egg coffee.” This popular café continues to be a must-visit in Hanoi, though you can find variations of his drink all across around Vietnam.
What does “Mediterranean food” mean? Ask a few people, and you’re likely to receive very different answers. While one person might think of a Greek salad sprinkled with feta cheese, another might think of a few Turkish stuffed grape leaf dolmas. That’s expected: there are twenty-one countries in the Mediterranean Basin; it’s only natural that “Mediterranean food” is wide and can denote any local cuisine or sub-cuisine from the region.
These countries, however, all share common denominators in ingredients, traditions, and practices. Here, we’ll break down the history of Mediterranean cuisine, including the significant impact of the Mediterranean Diet.
The Influence of a Single Book
Mediterranean food wasn’t always as popular as it is now, but in the ’70s, a trend started to take traction. One of the primary reasons? The term “Mediterranean Diet” was popularized thanks to the researcher Ancel Keys. His 1975 guide How To Eat Well And Stay Well The Mediterranean Way, which he wrote along with his wife Margaret Keys, was a bestseller. In it, the authors argued that Mediterranean food habits, traditions, and ingredients encourage superior cardiovascular health and may be correlated to longevity.
The book was based on research under Keys’ The Seven Countries Study, which included the U.S., Japan, Italy, Finland, Greece, the Netherlands, and former Yugoslavia. The study showed that men living in Italy and Greece had lower heart disease than the other countries surveyed, which the researcher correlated to their diet.
Food as Intangible Cultural Heritage
Over the next few decades, Mediterranean food continued to enjoy its share of fame. In 2010, the Mediterranean Diet was inscribed into UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. “The Mediterranean diet involves a set of skills, knowledge, rituals, symbols and traditions concerning crops, harvesting, fishing, animal husbandry, conservation, processing, cooking, and particularly the sharing and consumption of food,” they wrote in the forward. Initially, UNESCO had recognized only Italy, Spain, Greece and Morocco as part of this, but in 2013, the list was updated to include Portugal, Croatia, and Cyprus.
The fame of Mediterranean food isn’t just about the recipes. The inscription acknowledges the sociocultural roles of “values of hospitality, neighborliness, intercultural dialogue and creativity, and a way of life guided by respect for diversity.”
The Mediterranean Diet vs. Mediterranean Cuisine
It’s crucial to note that the Mediterranean Diet isn’t synonymous with Mediterranean food. The “diet” is a voluntary, conscious effort at health and longevity taken by anyone in the world — typically in the West, where Ancel Keys’ research was published. This association typically conjures images of Italian, Greek, and Spanish food.
On the other hand, Mediterranean cuisine is a natural manifestation of the food habits and trade in the region. Restaurants in the U.S. labeled as “Mediterranean” tend to offer eastern Mediterranean food such as Turkish or Middle Eastern.
Bánh xèo is the Vietnamese variation of the classic European crepe. This appetizing and extremely popular street food is made with a rice flour batter that’s both light and crispy when cooked. While it’s unclear exactly when bánh xèo came into existence, many believe it originated in central Vietnam, particularly during the Tay Son era. Crepes were so popular during that time that locals would swap their rice meals with bánh xèo every 2nd and 16th day of the lunar month. Others believe the dish is influenced by South Indian cuisine or the Cham culture.
Bánh xèo is filled with delicious ingredients like pork, shrimp, bean sprouts, mung bean, onions, and fresh herbs, and often served with dipping condiments like peanut or fish sauce. Regardless of the type you try, this simple dish highlights the delicate balance of flavors and textures signature to Vietnamese cuisine.
Cơm tấm, or Vietnamese broken rice, is one of the signature dishes of South Vietnam — but it’s more than just an affordable plate of rice. It’s a dish with a deep history that begins with the farmers of the Mekong Delta.
The humble dish, known as broken rice because the grains are broken, is a symbol of the hardships during the country’s war and colonization up to its urbanization in the 20th century. It was commonly made into animal feed or rice flour and consumed by farmers or Vietnamese families on a tight budget. As urbanization developed, workers from the Mekong Delta began moving into cities, bringing along their cơm tấm recipes. The dish soon became a popular meal among laborers and students on a budget. Eventually, it became a beloved delicacy among many locals and tourists, with Vietnamese chefs creating fancier and more modern interpretations all around the country.
Serving Cơm Tấm
Traditionally, Cơm Tấm was served with only two ingredients: shredded pork skin & scallion oil. Today, there are countless variations, many of which are served with delicacies like grilled lemongrass pork chops, steamed egg cake, or fried shrimp paste. Plates of cơm tấm are also topped with fresh cucumbers, tomatoes, and sautéed green onions for balance. From being called “poor man’s food” to becoming a national delicacy popular among locals and tourists, cơm tấm has come a long way, just like the beautiful country from which it originates.
If you were to walk through downtown San Francisco in the 1870s, you’d see wide streets lined with tall, Victorian-style buildings. You’d watch men in top hats and tailored suits alongside women in puffed Italian sleeves and long skirts crossing dust-filled roads. You’d hear the creaky wooden wheels of horse-drawn carriages rolling over the hard dirt ground as they made visible tracks through the fallen dust.
You’d also become mesmerized by the scent of warm masa and roasted chicken wafting through the air. Tamales were San Francisco’s original hot and ready street food, sold by vendors throughout the young city once upon a time. Though their popularity has had its fair share of ebbs and flows, today they’re a beloved staple of the street food lineup. So, how exactly did the tamale make its way from Mexico to the street carts of San Francisco?
How the Tamale Landed in San Francisco
It’s more accurate to say that San Francisco landed on the tamale. The land once belonged to Mexico, inhabited by the Californios. These settlers were of Spanish and Mexican descent and made their living trading cattle. The classic meat-stuffed Mexican tamale was a staple in their home kitchens, often with a Mediterranean twist of chopped olives courtesy of the Franciscan missionaries who brought olive trees over from Spain.
When the Mexican-American War ended in 1846, what was once Mexico became America, and the Californios were granted citizenship. But the moment James William Marshall struck gold in 1848, everything changed. In less than two short years, the promise of riches drove the population of this foggy, seaside town from 1,000 inhabitants to a city of more than 25,000 people.
Land value increased as more Anglo-Americans flooded in, and the Californios were pushed out. The first California Assembly reduced them to second-class citizens, stripping them of land and political power. They were subjected to additional taxes and new statutes like the Greaser Act, an anti-vagrancy law that penalized being insufficiently housed, primarily targeting Mexicans and Native Americans.
Building (and Feeding) a City from Scratch
Despite claims of abundant riches, the actual odds of striking it rich in the gold mines were low. This rapid population boom paired with a lack of existing infrastructure caused a dramatic rise in the cost of food, which meant endless opportunities to build a city and furnish it with urban conveniences. So the real money was in selling tools and building supplies, manufacturing jeans for miners (Levi Strauss), and making and selling food.
The majority of the miners arriving were white males, and only eight percent of the new population was made up of women. The men didn’t know how to cook for themselves and were barely getting enough to eat. They mostly lived off of biscuits and sourdough bread, which weren’t suited to the nature of mining because they required ovens and took a lot of time and effort to make.
Fine French restaurants were there for those who could afford them, but there was a need for quick, cheap, and convenient meals for those on miners’ wages. Mexican foods like tortillas and tamales were the perfect sustenance. They could provide a calorie-dense meal for hungry laborers and cooked quickly over a hot fire.
This was the tamale’s moment to shine! Mexican “Tamaleros “ donned traditional sombreros and pantaloons, selling tamales on street corners. The cheap and filling handheld meals were instantly popular among non-white laborers. But due to their poverty, the Californios were snubbed by white miners, and little social or mealtime interaction took place between the Mexicans and the Anglo settlers. Defeating Mexico in the war made Americans, in particular, too prideful to embrace the food culture of their southern neighbors.
As a result, the exotic tamale faced a racially-motivated propaganda campaign that presented them as inferior to the fancy French foods the wealthy were eating in restaurants. White settlers, eager to diminish the reputations of the Californios, began to spread rumors that the tamale vendors were unsanitary. To add insult to injury, tamale vendors were fined regularly for their operations.
While tamales remained popular among many immigrants, Americans and Europeans rarely gave Mexican vendors a chance. Instead, they opted for more familiar (but far less convenient, less healthy, and arguably blander) foods. These racist notions caused many low-wage white miners to suffer from malnutrition and hunger.
The Americanization of the Tamale
The tamale remained popular among the Mexican population, but by the early 1890s, opportunistic white businessmen began to usurp their businesses. In 1892, Robert H. Putnam opened *The California Chicken Tamale Co*. But instead of hiring Mexican workers, he hired immigrants from Greece, Chile, Lithuania, Brazil, Italy, and Poland, dressing them in uniforms of white linen to lend the operation a crisp, “sanitary” perception. They wore round stovepipe hats and distributed warm tamales from steam pails. Putnam soon expanded to cities across the country and the tamale craze spread. In 1894, the magazine Good Housekeeping even printed a home recipe for tamales, introducing them as “the dish is sold in the streets of San Francisco.”
The Industrialization of the Tamale
The Americanization of “exotic” foods as a business model was quickly imitated by entrepreneurs across the US. But a corn husk shortage in 1895 slowed things down dramatically, and many vendors were forced to close. Seeing this as an opportunity to promote their canning businesses, American businessmen decried street vendors as dangerous and unsanitary. Since cans would eliminate the need for hard-to-find corn husks, they began suggesting that industrial canning and the inspection that came with it made tamales safer to eat.
Charles H. Workman opened the W.G.M. Canning Company in 1900, which signaled the final blow for the tamale street vendor. Earning the post-mortem nickname “Tamale King,” Workman patented a special can lining that allowed workers to stuff tin cans with a can-shaped layer of masa and then fill them with meat. He quickly derailed the competition, increasing production from 300 tamales a day in 1900 to 140,000 per day in 1913.
The Complicated Legacy of the Tamale
Laws regulating who could sell street food in the late 1800s persisted for over a century, making factories the intermediaries between maker and consumer. As America became more reliant on convenience foods starting in the 1950s and 60s, tamales were something you either made at home, ordered in a Mexican restaurant, or bought in the frozen food section of a grocery store.
The connection between immigration, street vendors, and racial discrimination can’t be ignored because it has persisted for so long. After Mexican vendors were sanitation-shamed in the late 1800s, sending the tamale business off the streets and into factories, the early 1900s saw the tamale trade thrive once again. This time, in the hands of Sikh and Afghan immigrants. But by 1917, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed a statute that specifically banned the sale of street tamales.
Meanwhile, non-white citizenship became an ever more complicated affair, often being revoked from hard-working immigrants in order to remove them as economic competitors. Even when citizenship requirements loosened for non-whites during WWII (namely because America wanted to avoid comparisons to the Nazis), regulatory hurdles kept immigrant food vendors from hitting the streets again for decades.
A Tale of Two Tamales
Taking a walk through San Francisco nowadays, much like in the 1870s, you can still latch on to the toasty scent of warm tamales in the air. You can grab a burrito, a taco, or a tamale from a street vendor on just about any corner of the city. But the streetside legacy of the tamale didn’t come full circle until the early 2000s.
The resurgence of street food in San Francisco started getting noticed around 2009. An article in the SFGate described both legal and illegal operations popping up around the city. The most famous vendor, in an ironic nod to the roots of the city, was Virginia Ramos, a.k.a The Tamale Lady. Ramos emigrated to the city in 1980, and through house cleaning and tamale trading, she put five children through college.
Ramos was a beloved staple of the after-bar scene, but when the San Francisco Environmental Health Department got wind of her side hustle in 2013, they warned the bars she set up in front of that they would be fined for allowing an illegal vendor to set up shop near their business. The community then pooled funds to get her a legal brick-and-mortar business, but she died before the doors opened. Her story is documented in the 2018 short film Our Lady of Tamale.
The legal landscape is still murky, despite a nationwide surge in the popularity of street food. San Francisco was recently named one of the five most difficult cities in America to start a food truck business. The existing laws have been flagged for how aspiring entrepreneurs, big and small, are vetted differently when it comes to licensing. LA Times columnist Gustavo Arrellano wrote in a 2022 article, “When high-end chefs do all this, they get love from the press and praise from hipsters. When working-class Latinos do it? They get code enforcement called on them — and politicians figuring out how to crack down on street food even further.”
An Icon of Immigration History
From the Gold Rush to today, this street food battle doesn’t seem to be fizzling away. Thankfully, food lovers, talented cooks, and equity advocates have come up with workarounds that are making the process easier for immigrants and aspiring entrepreneurs to get into the food business.
Platforms like Shef are making the food economy more widely accessible, particularly for immigrants, refugees, women, and people of color. We connect local, food safety-certified cooks with customers in their community, helping them earn a meaningful income by selling homemade dishes. Nonprofits like La Cocina help these same communities access commercial kitchens where they can learn the business side and navigate the tricky legal waters with more ease and support.
The San Francisco tamale is loaded with more than melty cheese, spicy jalapeños, and shredded chicken. It’s a literal bite of history, taking us back to the very origin of the city itself. It’s the story of immigration, equity, and hungry entrepreneurs. Above all, the tamale is a symbol of perseverance. So, the next time you unwrap a warm husk and sink your teeth into that soft bundle, remember that over a century of boundaries were broken through in order for it to end up in your hands. The tamale isn’t just street food. It’s a verifiable icon of San Francisco’s culinary history.
San Francisco’s rich and diverse culture can be experienced through its art and music scenes, its architecture, and, of course, its food. Mexican culture in particular has greatly influenced the city, thanks to the large Hispanic population and the history between Spanish America and Mexico.
The food and restaurant scene in Seattle, Washington is thriving — and satisfying the cravings of both residents and visitors alike. With diverse restaurant options and large food markets such as the famous Pike Place Market, food lovers can eat their way through 
This was the tamale’s moment to shine! Mexican “Tamaleros “ donned traditional sombreros and pantaloons, selling tamales on street corners. The cheap and filling handheld meals were instantly popular among non-white laborers. But due to their poverty, the Californios 
