Here’s the menu and place setting… you can see they serve a small bowl of fried spiced chickpeas which are very crunchy and tasty.

We started with an appetizer of the Totopos con Chile (tortilla chips, salsa de arbol, cotija cheese, onions, cilantro, crema and lime). The chips are coated in the salsa (which is extremely spicy) – it’s the closest equivalent to nachos meets chilaquiles.  I enjoyed the totopos very much, and couldn’t stop eating them despite being so spicy my eyes were watering and my face was red and hot and my mouth was on fire.

Here are the carnitas! I ordered this dish because it got amazing reviews and I wanted to see what all the hype was about.  As you can see it’s quite a large piece of meat, served with coleslaw and hot sauce.  This is the menu description: Braised pork, orange, bay leaf, milk, cinnamon, beer Cabbage salad, pickled jalapeño and salsa de tomatillo.  The dish is also served with a few hot tortillas.

Here’s a closeup!

The meat is tender and juicy with some charred bits that are super tasty.  I ended up making mini tacos with the meat, tortillas and slaw (“cabbage salad”)… I had to order a second order of tortillas and ate a total of about 5. Yummers!

When the check came they brought little mexican cookies – kind of nutty with powdered sugar on top.

That’s it!  Have you been to Nopalito? What did you think?

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This time I planned on getting there early enough to get a seat! Swan Oyster Depot opens promptly at 10:30am. We arrived at 9:50am on a Thursday. We were the first people there! So we walked up the street and got a cup of coffee and walked back to the Swan to officially get in line. It was about 10:10am and we were still the first people in line… but not for long.

People began to appear and suddenly the line was about 20 people deep. Apparently this was a “slow morning”.

Here’s a guy setting up the windows. The sun was beating down so he had white paper covering all of the fish until the sun wasn’t so direct.

This shot was taken right after they put all the stools down… 5 minutes before this shot all of the stools were piled up in sets of two against the wall. This is it though, this is the entire restaurant. One main counter with stools. It doesn’t seat many people, hence why there is always a line to get in. It’s awesome, old school, authentic and everything you’d hope a seafood diner would be.

Yay, they finally opened and we took our seats about halfway down the bar, directly in front of the menu on the wall. I ordered what I had the last time I was there – the combination seafood cocktail and a bowl of clam chowder.

There was a huge bowl of oyster crackers every 3 feet or so… we were lucky enough to sit right in front of one! When you sit down you also get a big hunk of bread and butter, but I forgot to take a photo of that…

My view from the bar…

Ahhh the combination seafood cocktail! It’s served in a little sundae dish and it looks small but boy does it pack a big punch. The bottom is filled with lump crab meat, it’s topped with a jumbo shrimp and an oyster. And you get a big dish of cocktail sauce to dip everything into. It’s pretty mild and ice cold which is yum.

The first time I had this clam chowder I remember it being the absolute best clam chowder I’ve ever had. This past time I beg to differ but only because it was slightly luke warm… but I’m going to blame it on the fact that it was 10:30am and we were the first people in line. It was still very good and I ate almost the entire bread chunk they gave us.

What makes this soup so tasty is the fact that the broth is super flavorful and isn’t not super chunky… it’s definitely creamy but on the thinner side which makes dipping bread into it completely OCD and oyster crackers absorb the broth faster.  It’s really, really good.

So, long story short, place is great. Despite all the hype surrounding this place, I still think it’s worth going (if you have time). The seafood is super fresh, nice and cold, and the ambiance brings me right back to the diners of Pennsylvania and New Jersey.  You really don’t find many down home places like this in San Francisco. I love everything about it, except the super long line.

Swan Oyster Depot
1517 Polk St
San Francisco, CA 94109

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I love the garlic bread, it’s soooo good…

Here’s the spaghetti and meatballs. The sauce is the thick and tangy kind, not overly spiced. The meatballs are LARGE and provide just the perfect amount of meat for the dish.  You don’t feel like scrappin the spaghetti because there’s no meatball left.  These balls are big.

This place is good if you have a strong hankering for basic spaghetti and meatballs.

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