Che Fico - NoPa

a friend and i met @BradFord here for dinner to check out the extremely hyped che fico. probably most known for getting gram’ed by the coop and the goop, and getting national attention from the nyt, wapo and bon appetit.

coppa, wsr felino salami
nice

pear & lonza - k & j orchards shinko pears, saba
everything about this was great, the sweet saba and juicy pears complemented the salty cured meat perfectly.

tomatero farms early girl tomatoes - double 8 dairy mozzarella, demi-sec early girl tomatoes, lovage, marin roots mint
great umami from the tomatoes. delicous.

suppli - fried risotto, tomato, fontina
like a cheesy rice croquette, i could eat ten more of these.

grilled chopped duck liver - onion marmalatta, purple daikon, pickled pearl onion, roman matzo
nice and livery with chunks of liver.

pappardelle al ragu - bolognese, 48-month parmigiano reggiano
our favorite out of the pastas, really good.

garganelle - pancetta, dirty girl produce cranberry beans & pole beans

bigoli nero ai ricci di mare - fort bragg sea urchin, peperoncino, chives

mushroom, sausage, mozzarella, calabrian chili
no this isn’t what it looked like before being cooked. the mushrooms were so raw smurfs were still living inside them and the ̶c̶h̶a̶r̶r̶e̶d̶ ,nay, burned black crust will make lodge’s bread look under-cooked. a big fail on taste and composition, there was no way you could eat this without having the uncooked mushrooms just slide off your slice, which in hindsight probably would have tasted better. maybe @Bookwich would like it.

tierra vegetables farm creamy polenta, parmigiano reggiano
okay

wood roasted potatoes, watercress salad, lamb drippings
surprisingly good

persimmons

toto

unfortuantely, it didn’t live up to the hype on this visit, the starters were great, the pastas were fine to good but the pizza was a fail. but i would give it another shot just for the starters and maybe try some different pastas and the porchetta (which they were out of), but i would skip the pizza.

Che Fico
838 Divisadero St
San Francisco, CA 94117
(415) 416-6959

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Well, a lot of it looks absolutely fantastic and next trip we will definitely try it out. Which caused me to say “what’s this NoPa stuff/” So I looked it up and had more than one chuckle. It is indeed “Divis.”

It did start off well…and yeah, that pizza, ugh.

I did end up replicating that pear & lonza at home, though, with thinner slices of pear

:rofl:

I’ve heard it both ways. Che Fico is in the heart of exactly what many locals now refer to as NoPa. It’s also 0.2 miles from the aptly named restaurant Nopa.

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I’m so old that I remember when there was no SoMa :slight_smile: And no one had ever heard of Noe Valley. (We lived there and I would have to say “between Twin Peaks and the Mission.”)

Come see what we’re making in the Nopa neighborhood!

Thanks for the review. I’ve been waiting for the hype to die down before trying it as I am line averse and haven’t been able to find decent reso times. Did you have a reso or wait in line?

re: “Nopa” - The name is pretty settled in by now. I’ve lived here 20 years and have no issue with it but I know some people don’t like change. You can still call Cesar Chavez Army Street if you want to but the tides have turned there too and I rarely encounter anyone, local or otherwise, who still refers to it by its old name.

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I used to see posters in windows saying something like “It’s still Army Street to me” or some such. 'Course that name change had a lot more political angst associated with it. We moved away almost 20 years ago. Still miss going to the Mission when most people we knew were afraid of it. LOL. And the food was good then also. Back when Slanted Door and Fina Estampa were there.

we had a reservation.

The Western Addition is almost everything between Van Ness and the Richmond. People have been naming sub-areas for a long time. I think “Nopa” was popularized less by real estate types than by people who lived there and wanted to distinguish their then-nameless neighborhood from adjacent ones. I first heard it from one of those people.

Hey, wth?!

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Hey, I thought you were on team char #teamchar

Char, not burned. It’s the difference between a steak cooked over a fire to well done versus thrown on the flames just long enough that the fat gets lightly charred and you bite into it that crust and the fat explodes in your mouth.

And nobody likes raw mushrooms falling off their pizza!

I hope this clarifies the meaning of #teamchar. :sunglasses:

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Better look at the char without the cheese.
https://www.foodtalkcentral.com/uploads/short-url/57bcD3cB8C6d4dRFfeHnfcejtt1.jpeg
yelp

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Cutesy abbreviations irritate her. You wanna’ really send her over the edge? Use words like Cali or sammie.

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Oh fun

Yikes. It’s hard to believe it was meant to come out like that.

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Yep, it looks awful @robert.

I have a question @PorkyBelly. Is the chopped duck liver hiding under the purple daikon?

yep, it was also served with some matzo crackers.

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I saw that, but I didn’t see them either.

intentional

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