Aminta Calderon vividly remembers the fire. Flames consumed the building at 22nd and Mission streets where she worked, sending smoke everywhere and forcing her and her family to exit their ground-floor eatery, Antojitos Salvadoreños Aminta.
She returned at 6 a.m. the next morning and donned a hardhat, hoping to see what could be salvaged. Nothing.
“I can’t describe it,” Calderon, 73, told Mission Local in Spanish, of the destruction following the four-alarm fire that left dozens of residents and businesses displaced (including Mission Local), and killed a man. “I felt a terrible sadness. It was the center of the universe for so many.”
But after eight long years away from the Mission, Antojitos Salvadoreños Aminta has returned home. The Salvadoran favorite reopened at 24th and Folsom streets on Sept. 20 this year, and business has boomed ever since, despite being takeout-only for now.
“It’s a beautiful space,” Calderon said. “The only sad thing is seeing the people who can’t eat here.”
That could change soon. Calderon hopes to add six tables, “mesitas,” for indoor dining, which she’d wedge next to the Central American goods on sale along the wall at 3109 24th St. If they can swing a parklet, she’d pull for that, too.
While the menu is a bit smaller than that at the original 22nd Street location — back then, you could order “any type of Salvadoran food” imaginable, she claimed — Antojitos still offers pupusas, fried plantains, and beverages like fresh-squeezed juice and atol de elote. Customers can see the action happen, the pots of soup boiling and the cooks rolling pupusa masa, in full view.
Calderon learned to cook in El Salvador but, before opening Antojitos, she was a chef at a restaurant on Persia Avenue for eight years. She established Antojitos in 2006, nine years before the fire that led to the destruction of the Mission Market Food Mall. Her kiosk drew Central American fans all around. On a “bad day,” she said, it could garner 100 customers, while successful days brought in more than 200.
Despite being displaced in 2015 along with dozens of others, Antojitos found a new home in San Mateo just nine months later. While the space at 397 South Claremont Ave. wasn’t on the Peninsula suburb’s main commercial corridor, Antojitos had no shortage of customers: The bigger space and kitchen were revered, and Antojitos’ departure in 2022 after seven years incited bereft fans to leave comments on Yelp, wondering where they were.
“This place is my favorite Salvadorian restaurant. I used to go there with my family. But last time I went, it was closed,” one reviewer wrote of the San Mateo location in 2022. “Does anyone know if they moved or if they closed forever?”
But its San Franciscan clientele never forgot it, either. “Some of them followed us there” to San Mateo, Calderon said. “They kept asking us, ‘When are you coming back? When?’”
That day arrived in September after Calderon was tipped off about a vacancy on 24th Street — a welcome addition for pupusa fans, especially since Sunrise shut down this January. The 22nd Street fire site, meanwhile, is still empty. Owner Hawk Lou has submitted plans to construct a 10-story project of mostly market-rate housing, with retail businesses on the ground floor. The plan vastly differs from the building where Calderon previously worked.
For her part, Calderon has moved on. The 24th Street location allows her to work nearer her home on Valencia Street — her reason for moving out of San Mateo, despite success there.
Antojitos continues to be a family business, with her daughter, Rosa Margarita Calderon; her son-in-law, Wilfred Orellano; and her grandson, Jeziel, working behind the counter. In Antojitos’ latest iteration, Rosa Margarita is taking the reins more anyway, with more energy. Calderon smiled: “She’s young!” she said, and has the verve to step into the role.
I am so happy to read this! We loved the restaurant at Mission Market. Still will miss the ambiance, but at least I can get my pupusa fix!