I didn’t know what to eat for lunch and walking around on Valencia Street decided to try Flor De Cafe.
I got the Original/Chilean Lomito $14. It’s a Huge sandwich with tender pork, sauerkraut, mayo, avocado, tomato. Comes with either a small cup of soup or salad. I asked what the soup was and lady said chicken soup - It was ok, lots of small chunks of chicken and carrots in the soup. I ate half and took the other half home. You can also just buy a half sandwich for $7.95.
Lady gave me a small cup of mango juice on the house, that was nice.
They have plenty of tables & chairs to eat your food. I recommend the Lomito sandwich!
Flor de Cafe
1020 Valencia St
San Francisco, CA 94110
Thanks. Out of curiosity I look into lomitos in the Bay Area and it seems most of those are from Peruvian restaurants. Doesn’t seem like many are flying the Chilean flag.
i ate there right after they opened, and got the Lomito sandwich too, because we’d had it in Santiago, Chile, at a place made (more) famous by Anthony Bourdain on his show, No Reservations - La Fuente Alemana, a super old-school, utterly charming, diner-style restaurant. The lomito sandwich there was incredibly delicious, owing i believe to the very flavorful pork. Also, oddly, their mayonnaise is almost flavorless, but they really glop it on. I’ve read a lot of people here complain about the amount of mayo on the lomito at Flor de Cafe, but that’s the tradition. However, sadly, i didn’t think Flor de Cafe’s held a candle to the real deal in Chile. I met the owner, who was a very nice man, and I hope he does well, but his sandwich won’t become the sensation it has in Chile.
here’s video of the show. Fuente Aleman and the lomito show up around 3:35.
Huh, I didn’t get offered soup, just got dressed spinach with a cherry tomato.
Echoing above, pork, tasty when yanked from the sand which, isn’t abundant enough and gets drowned out by the ciabatta and mayo, which don’t get me wrong, is delicious but something I could do at home with a stronger tasting protein. The taste of sauerkraut with the lettuce tomato and mayo was surprisingly good.
@mariacarmen’s linked video is down, but like she says, google searches are showing me sandwiches overflowing with meat, in a sea of mayo— maybe not a marketable item in 2019 SF.
it’s true, but the funny thing is the mayonnaise in Chile, like I said, is almost flavorless, which may not sound appealing, but somehow it made the sandwich there less greasy than the one i had at Flor de Cafe - yet richer, if that’s possible. Hard to describe.
Since that video’s gone, here are pics of the sandwiches at Fuente Alemana in Santiago from our trip, and also a closeup of one I found online. It may be difficult to imagine that something that looks so gloppy wouldn’t be off-puttingly fatty and slimy, but it really wasn’t, and was, in fact, sublime.
it’s too bad Flor de Cafe can’t achieve the same deliciousness.
