Amanda Gold, Chronicle Staff Writer
Chris Stewart / SFC
Margaritas and a renowned Tequila collection are the main attractions at Tommy’s Mexican Restaurant.
This is Week 8 of our 49 Square Mile Project, in which The Chronicle’s Food & Wine staff searched out the most significant food-related enterprise in each square mile of the city. For an overview, go to sfg.ly/oNdJeK. Now we’re highlighting one square each week to spotlight more culinary attractions.
From Mexico to Morocco, we span the globe in the eighth square of our 49-mile search. Covering a wide stamp of the central Richmond District, heading west from Park Presidio to 30th Avenue and, looking north, from Anza into the Presidio, this square is largely associated with the dozens of Asian restaurants that dot the concentrated commercial stretches of Geary and Clement streets.
Most notably, there’s Ton Kiang, where owner Chin Wong has been serving a regular Chinese menu in addition to a wide selection of dumplings, buns and other dim sum specialties for more than 30 years. Though San Francisco is peppered with dim sum restaurants, this one remains among the most popular in the city.
Yet a handful of other types of restaurants have made an even greater impact.
Opened in 1965 by late owner Tommy Bermejo and his wife, Elmy, Tommy’s restaurant features foods from the Bermejos’ native Yucatan. But really, the restaurant is about the booze – Tommy’s son, Julio, is known as the Tequila expert around town and claims to pour the most extensive assortment of 100 percent agave Tequila outside of Mexico.
Despite the aging interior and food that isn’t particularly distinguished, customers still line up three deep at the bar to down Tommy’s margaritas.
For these reasons, we chose the Mexican restaurant as the winner of this square during our search. But it wasn’t a slam dunk.
Aziza’s history lies in the “what” rather than the “when.” The restaurant has only been open for a decade, short by Richmond District standards, but many consider it among the first, and finest, examples of modernized Moroccan cuisine.
Chef-owner Mourad Lahlou dishes out delicious fare using flavors from his childhood in Morocco, but adds a Northern California twist and contemporary technique and sophistication. You won’t find any belly dancing or hand washing here.
Italian cuisine is easy to find as well. For nostalgia, it’s worth checking out Gaspare’s pizza, which has been around for over 25 years. Plastic grapevines, checked oilcloths – you know the drill. But the pizza still pleases.
On the flip side, the pint-size Pizzetta 211 remains one of the first neighborhood spots to have popularized thin-crust, Neapolitan-style pizza. Now there seems to be at least one in every nook of the city.
And if it’s just plain old American you’re craving, head to Bill’s Place, which has been doling out juicy burgers since 1959. That, capped off with a drink at Trad’r Sam, a local tiki-style watering hole dating back to the late 1930s, makes for a perfect central Richmond evening.
