Green Chile Kitchen

Green Chile Stew w/pork

A friend of mine turned me on to this Nopa New Mexican restaurant.  I'm always wary of Mexican restaurants, not because I don't like Mexican food, but because it's usually very unhealthy.   I mean, I love a super burrito with sour cream and guacamole as much as the next person, but one of those is 2 days worth of calories for me.  Most Mexican restaurants use lard and pile on the cheese.  Green Chile Kitchen's food is clean, healthy "New Mexican inspired food with an emphasis on organic, sustainably grown, and local ingredients".

The spacious interior

Their signature dish, Green Chile Stew, is full of flavor and light and healthy.  My picture looks like brown stew, but it's really green!  You can order the stew with either Niman Ranch pork, chicken, or vegetarian.  The pork is really the best because it is braised slowly and very tender.  The chicken can be a little tougher.  Either way, the heart of the dish is the green chile stew which is almost soup like. It's pleasantly spicy with chunky bits of green chiles, tomatoes, potatoes, and some beans.  It's not greasy at all, and sour cream on top is optional.

Green Chile Kitchen also offers tacos, burritos, quesadillas, tamales, and rotisserie chicken.  All are of high quality ingredients but are pretty standard Mexican food.  What really stands out are the homemade tortilla chips.  Both yellow and blue corn tortilla chips are housemade and you can tell!  So crispy, salty, and warm - need I say more?

Apple Slice

Recently, Green Chile Kitchen moved into a large airy space so there's lots of seating.  The original location, just a block away is now Chile Pies (& ice cream).   At Green Chile Kitchen, there's always an incredible homemade looking apple pie in a glass dome.  The owners have probably branched out based on their success of their apple pies.

After dinner we walked down the hill and had dessert at Chile Pies (& ice cream) just to try it out.  We had the apple slice which had a very homemade taste.  The kids had the organic ice cream - there was a killer lemon cookie flavor and chocolate orange chip (!!!) just like Swiss orange chip from my Swensen's Ice Cream days.  Anyways, I'll eat there a few more times and post about it!

Green Chile Kitchen is located at:

1801 McAllister Street @ Baker
San Francisco, CA 94115
415 440 9411

Hours:  Sun - Thurs 9:00 a.m. - 9:30 p.m.
             Fri - Sat       9:00 a.m. - 10:00 p.m.

www.greenchilekitchen.com