Synopses & Reviews
Mission Street Food is a restaurant occasionally, at least. It's also a charitable organization, a former taco truck, a burger stand inside a grocery store, a fine-dining restaurant, and a Szechuan Chinese restaurant inside another Chinese restaurant.
The point is, it's impossible to say what Mission Street Food is, exactly, without a story.
Two years after Anthony Myint sublet a Salvadoran taco truck for a night so he could serve his own brand of inspired street food, he and his wife Karen Leibowitz have turned Mission Street Food into four wildly different and exciting restaurant incarnations. The food has remained bold and innovative throughout, and the mission has always been the same: To provide good, affordable food, while giving back to the community. Each Mission Street Food project has donated a significant portion of its profits to charities around San Francisco.
This book, the first of the as-yet-unnamed McSweeney's food imprint, captures the story and the spirit of Mission Street Food. It'll feature not only the unconventional story of Mission Street Food, but also thoughtful and hilarious discussions of contemporary food issues, tongue-in-cheek manifestos, vibrant images, one (maybe two) comics, and a bevy of worthwhile and tasty recipes.
Review
"Mission Street Food is an uncommonly generous read. When I finished it, I felt like I'd drained a cold can of beer at the end of a shift at the restaurant. The interplay of narrative, design, and photography is more compelling and candid than any food book I've ever seen; the focus on fundamental techniques and how to think in the kitchen is more truthful, accurate, and contemporary than almost any basic cookbook; in fact, the whole package — powered by the exuberance of Anthony Myint and Karen Leibowitz — is infectious, inspiring, something apart from the rest. This is a special book." Peter Meehan, co-author of Momofuku
Review
"An amazing story. An amazing institution. And now a book that's as creative and pioneering as its subjects. Let us hope that Mission Street Food's uniquely American success story points the way to a brighter — and delightfully stranger — future." Anthony Bourdain
Synopsis
Mission Street Food is a restaurant. But it's also a charitable organization, a taco truck, a burger stand, and a clubhouse for inventive cooks tucked inside an unassuming Chinese take-out place. In all its various incarnations, it upends traditional restaurant conventions, in search of moral and culinary satisfaction.
Like Mission Street Food itself, this book is more than one thing: it's a cookbook featuring step-by-step photography and sly commentary, but it's also the memoir of a madcap project that redefined the authors' marriage and a city's food scene. Along with stories and recipes, you'll find an idealistic business plan, a cheeky manifesto, and thoughtful essays on issues ranging from food pantries to fried chicken. Plus, a comic.
Ultimately, Mission Street Food: Recipes and Ideas from an Improbable Restaurant presents an iconoclastic vision of cooking and eating in twenty-first century America.