Hot Meal: Authentic Antojitos at Chilango in the Castro

J. Birdsall

Pozole, topped with a julienne of radish and finely shaved cabbage.

​Chilango opened a week ago, in the old Azteca Taqueria on Church in the Castro. Where you could once score a gut-busting burrito of middling quality, chef Roberto Aguiar Cruz is putting together Mexican street-food dishes remarkable for the quality of the ingredients. And they're hella tasty.

Cruz helped open Mexico DF (he's still listed as chef on the Web site), and before that cooked at Fonda in the East Bay. (The chef has family roots in the state of Nayarit on Mexico's Pacific coast.) His menu of two dozen antojitos, in this case, pretty hefty snacks -- almost all of them built around house-made tortillas or some other permutation of corn masa. It's not your everyday masa: It's from La Palma in the Mission, and contains a puree of nopal, or cactus. Not only does it tint the dough a pale green (the color pretty much fades with heat) and add a very subtle grassy flavor, but it yields tortillas with wonderfully rustic chew. Cruz claims Chilango is the only restaurant in the city that uses cactus masa. All beef and pork are Niman; the chicken is from Fulton Valley.

J. Birdsall

Tacos de suadero, long-cooked brisket turned crisp on the griddle.

​A trio of tacos filled with suadero (long-cooked beef brisket, turned carnitas-crispy on the griddle, $9) were fantastic, a hefty flurry of browned meat shards under a sprinkling of onion and cilantro. Tacos come with two salsas, a viscous red chile number so mild it was borderline bland, and a searing raw-tomatillo mash that more than made up for it. The kitchen's version of pozole ($10) is decidedly refined, with nuggets of dark-meat chicken and hominy in a guajillo chile-spiked broth with plenty of body, under a delicate julienne of radish and cabbage. Duck flautas ($12) were one dish that seemed to suffer from the toothy tortillas, rolled around shredded bird and deep fried. They proved a bit hard to chew.

The only thing harder to chew at Chilango? The prices, reasonable when you consider the ingredients and the kitchen's chops, but arguably steep if you can't quite shake the memory of those Azteca burritos. Cruz told us he's considering dropping the prices at lunch. But even at the present level, you won't find us complaining.

Chilango Cenaduria y Antojeria 235 Church (at Market), 255-7330. Open daily, 11:30 a.m.-10 p.m.