Every year the Day of the Dead brings several thousand people onto a stretch of 24th Street that most of them do not otherwise visit, and every year a good proportion of them arrive, watch, photograph, and leave without spending a dollar. The event exists because a community has fought to keep its own street; the least complicated way to be useful is to buy your dinner there.
The best way to be a good guest at a neighbourhood event is to spend money in the neighbourhood. Tell Karpo where you are heading and get the places near you that have actually been there a while.
The corridor, briefly
The stretch of 24th Street between Mission and Potrero is the heart of the Calle 24 Latino Cultural District, a formally recognised district created specifically to protect the businesses and character of the corridor against displacement. That designation is the reason a street this central still has tortillerías and family-run grocers on it rather than another row of the same six chains.
Practically, it means the good places here are old. Not fashionable-old — actually old, with the same families running them, and prices that reflect a customer base that lives locally rather than one that travels in for the evening.
La Palma Mexicatessen, which is the anchor
At 24th and Florida, La Palma has been making tortillas since 1953. It is three businesses at once — a tortilla factory, a grocery and a taqueria — and it is the single best place on the street to understand what the district is protecting.
The thing to buy is masa or tortillas, still warm, made on site. A packet of fresh corn tortillas costs almost nothing and is a fundamentally different object from the supermarket version; if you cook at all, this is the purchase that will change something about how you cook afterwards. The taqueria side does the full menu with those tortillas, and the grocery carries the pantry staples and house salsas.
It is also, importantly, a daytime business. If you are coming for an evening event and want to buy from La Palma, come early — this is not somewhere to try at ten at night after a procession.
- La Palma Mexicatessen, 2884 24th Street: tortillas and fresh masa since 1953, plus grocery and taqueria — go in daylight
- El Farolito at Mission and 24th: the late-night taqueria, and it improves as the night goes on
- The panaderias along the corridor for pan de muerto in the days around 2 November
- Buy on the street rather than eating before you arrive — that is the whole point
- Bring cash; several of the older businesses prefer it
It is worth saying what a legacy business designation does and does not do. It does not freeze rents or guarantee survival; it is recognition, some access to support, and a public record that a place matters. Businesses on this corridor still close. The thing that actually keeps a seventy-year-old tortilla factory open is people buying tortillas on an ordinary weekday, which is a less satisfying answer than a policy and a considerably more reliable one.
Late, and the other end of the street
El Farolito, at the Mission Street end, is the late option and one of the defining taquerías of this city. Its reputation is built on the hours nobody else keeps, and the standard local observation is that it gets better rather than worse as the night goes on, which is not how restaurants normally work.
For an evening event this is the natural end point: the procession passes, the crowd disperses, and there is somewhere to eat properly at eleven within a block of where you are standing. Expect a queue, expect it to move quickly, and expect the portions to end the evening decisively.
Pan de muerto is the seasonal thing to look for
In the days around the 2nd, the bakeries along the corridor sell pan de muerto — a round, slightly sweet, orange-scented bread topped with strips of dough shaped as bones and a knob representing a skull. It is placed on ofrendas and it is also just eaten, in quantity, with coffee.
Buying one is the most direct way to participate in the holiday if you are not building an altar. It exists for a fortnight and then it is gone until next year, which is the correct way for a seasonal food to behave and is increasingly rare in a country where everything is available permanently.
If you are eating on the night of the procession itself, plan around the crowd rather than fighting it. The sit-down places along the corridor fill from early evening and stay full; the counters and bakeries turn over fast and are the realistic option. Buying something you can carry and eat standing is not a compromise here — it is how most of the street eats on a normal day anyway.
Going on an ordinary day instead
The corridor is better on a normal Tuesday than on the busiest night of its year, and the food is unquestionably easier to get to. The murals are the other reason: Balmy Alley, a block off 24th, holds one of the densest concentrations of political mural art in the country, with work going back to the 1970s, and Osage Alley nearby adds more. Both are outdoors, free and permanently there.
24th Street Mission BART sits at the western end of the corridor, so the whole thing is a straightforward walk from a single station: eat at one end, walk the murals in the middle, buy tortillas at the other. That is a genuinely good couple of hours and it costs almost nothing.
Practical notes
The 24th Street corridor between Mission and Potrero forms the Calle 24 Latino Cultural District, and it is the route of the Mission's Día de los Muertos procession on 2 November. La Palma Mexicatessen at 2884 24th Street has been making tortillas and fresh masa since 1953 and combines a tortilla factory, grocery and taqueria — visit in daylight. El Farolito at Mission and 24th is the late-night option. The panaderías sell pan de muerto in the days around the holiday. Balmy Alley's murals are a block away, and 24th Street Mission BART is at the end of the corridor. Bring cash.
Tags: #SanFrancisco #MissionDistrict #24thStreet #Restaurants #DiaDeLosMuertos #Calle24 #Taqueria #SFEats #LegacyBusiness #Tortillas #CheapEats #SFRestaurants #ThingsToDoSF #Panaderia
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Want to know which places near you are the long-standing ones rather than the new ones, what they are known for, and when they close? Ask Karpo what is worth eating around you tonight.
