North Beach will feed you extremely well and it will not, for the most part, feed you tacos. It is an Italian neighbourhood pressed against a Chinese one, and the taco density in this corner of San Francisco is close to the lowest in the city. This is not a criticism — it is the premise for one of the better walks in town, because the taco quality rises almost monotonically as you head south and by the time you have arrived somewhere serious you have crossed four distinct neighbourhoods on foot.
The tacos get better with every block south. Ask Karpo which counters on the route are open before you set off walking.
Why the north end is thin
San Francisco's Mexican food geography is a settlement map. The great taquerias are concentrated in the Mission because that is where the city's Mexican and Central American communities established themselves, and the density there is extraordinary — dozens of counters within twenty blocks. The northern neighbourhoods have their own equally deep food histories, Italian and Cantonese, and the taco offer up there is correspondingly sparse and mostly aimed at visitors.
So the honest advice for anyone standing in North Beach wanting tacos is: walk. It is about forty minutes on foot to the northern edge of the Mission, largely downhill or flat, and the route passes through downtown and the SoMa fringe, both of which have their own worthwhile stops.
Stop one: the northern fringe
Start with something small at the closest counter you can find on the eastern edge of the neighbourhood — one taco, no additions, purely as a baseline. It is unlikely to be the best of the day and that is the point: you want a reference for what a mediocre San Francisco taco tastes like, so the improvement over the next hour is legible rather than theoretical.
Keep the order small at every stop. A crawl fails when the first stop is a full meal. One taco per counter, four or five counters, and you finish having eaten roughly one large dinner across two hours of walking.
Stop two: downtown and the SoMa edge
The middle of the walk crosses the financial district and the streets below Market, where the Mexican food is aimed at lunch trade and is consequently much better on a weekday than a weekend. This is the best place on the route to try a taco with a griddled filling — the lunch counters here turn over fast enough that everything is fresh, and the pricing is calibrated to office workers rather than tourists.
Weekend walkers should expect several of these to be closed and should simply push on. It is a fifteen-minute stretch and there is no point standing in front of a shuttered lunch counter on a Sunday.
Stop three onward: the real thing
Crossing into the Mission the character changes completely. Here you are choosing between counters rather than looking for one, and the differences are worth understanding. Some kitchens are strongest on grilled meats cooked to order; others are built around slow-braised fillings that improve over the course of the day; a few specialise in the vertical spit, which is best in the evening once it has had hours to build a crust. The tortilla tells you the most: a place that warms them properly on the griddle is taking the whole thing seriously.
Order one taco at each of three counters within a few blocks of each other and you will have a clearer sense of San Francisco taco culture than any article can give you, including this one. The differences are obvious once they are side by side and almost impossible to describe in the abstract.
Practical notes for the walk
The route is mostly downhill from North Beach to Market Street and flat after that, which is the correct direction — doing it in reverse ends with a serious climb. Allow two to three hours including stops. Carry a little cash for the counters that prefer it. Salsa is part of the dish rather than a condiment, and the hot one is usually genuinely hot.
If you would rather not walk the middle section, the rail line runs directly under Market Street and will take you from the downtown stretch to the Mission in a few minutes, which turns a three-hour crawl into a ninety-minute one without losing the good part.
The finish
End on 24th Street rather than in the middle of the Mission's busiest blocks. It is quieter, the counters are more residential in feel, and finishing a taco crawl with a coffee or a pastry from one of the bakeries along there is a much better ending than one more taco you did not need. Then take the train home, because you have walked four miles and eaten five tacos and that is a complete day.
Tags: #BestTacos #NorthBeach #MissionDistrict #SanFrancisco #TacoCrawl #HiddenGems #SFFood #WhereToEatSF #Taqueria #24thStreet #BayArea #WalkableSF #SFEats #StreetFood
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Ask Karpo first
Want the version of this crawl that is actually open right now, in the right order? Ask Karpo which counters near you are serving before you start walking.
