On Wednesday night, Tacos Oscar will be substituting its guacasalsa and chile-braised beef shoulder for butter masala chicken and mint-serrano chutney during the third iteration of its longtime collaboration with New York-based Indian condiment company Brooklyn Delhi.
The one-night pop-up will run from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. at Tacos Oscar’s Woods location (530 Haight St.) and will feature a handful of Indian-Mexican dishes using Tacos Oscar’s homemade corn tortillas and Brooklyn Delhi’s sauces. On the menu are butter chicken tacos, masala grilled corn esquites tostadas, red bean rajma masala nachos, and garlic achaar paneer tacos.
“There are just so many ingredients that the two cuisines share, and there’s a lot of overlap with tamarind and some of the spices like cumin, the chili, things like that,” said Brooklyn Delhi founder and food writer Chitra Agrawal. “A lot of times you may find a salsa that has a lot of the same ingredients that go into an Indian cilantro chutney. So I feel like there’s just like so many ways that it works really well together.”
The pop-up was formerly held at Tacos Oscar’s Temescal location, once in 2018 and once last year, drawing lines around the block. Tacos Oscar first opened doors in Oakland in 2018 and brought its funky, Californized meat and vegan tacos across the bridge late last year with its Woods expansion. Agrawal and Tacos Oscar founder Oscar Michel met while studying at UC Berkeley and have been friends since.
Agrawal, the daughter of Indian immigrants, grew up in New Jersey on a range of Indian-fusion dishes, such as her dad’s black bean butter masala tacos or spicy penne vodka with garlic achaar.
“Achaar is a very traditional Indian condiment. It actually means pickled or preserved, so it has very intense flavors,” said Agrawal. “So we have roasted garlic with chili and black mustard seeds and lemon, and it just really hits on all these notes of sweet, sour, and spicy.” In her experience, it’s an excellent ingredient in anything from pizzas to hakka noodles to micheladas.
Brooklyn Delhi is the product of her love for Indian condiments in all kinds of dishes. While writing her blog as well as her cookbook, Vibrant India, Agrawal hosted an Indian-Chinese supper club and an Indian-Mexican supper club, often homemaking condiments like achaars, masalas, and chutneys for the clubs. Her husband, food packaging designer Ben Garthus, thought it was time they bottle and jar her recipes and sell them across New York City. That was in 2014; now, their products appear in Blue Apron meal kits, Whole Foods, Target, Safeway, Sprouts, Wegmans, and other groceries across the US.
Brooklyn Delhi’s line has expanded beyond condiments to simmer sauces and plant-based meal pouches, such as their black bean butter masala or red bean rajma masala, which Agrawal grew up eating on top of nachos. (You’ll be able to eat rajma masala nachos, too, on Wednesday night.)
A portion of the proceeds from the pop-up will benefit Calma, a San Francisco-based volunteer community that supports laborers, migrants, and asylum seekers. Tacos will go for $6 apiece, while nachos and tostadas are $12.
