AJ’s BBQ & Cafe is a quick service restaurant consisting of steam tables filled with delicious home-style Filipino cooking, also known as a turo turo. It’s a family restaurant passed down generations. When Kevin Guevarra took over two years ago he renamed it AJ’s BBQ & Cafe, named after his son.
Guevarra starts the day by serving breakfast. Coffee, Thai iced tea, and boba teas flavored with taro. Other morning items include donuts, breakfast burritos, and more traditional Filipino fare like longsilog – house-made pork and garlic breakfast sausages served with garlic rice and fried egg. There’s a steady stream of passerby’s who come through to grab a quick breakfast on their way to work.
Thai iced tea and taro root boba with Kevin’s famous lumpia
You can find Guevarra, on most days, behind the counter cooking and chatting with regulars. He is passionate about what he does and it shows. He’s not just running a business, he is doing what he loves – cooking the foods he grew up on and making everyone feel at home. Out of all of the Filipino restaurants I’ve been to this place is like a primer on the cuisine. He was serving just about every dish I had read about and was more than happy to explain each one to me.
His lumpia shanghai are hand rolled and made with ground pork, vegetables, and black pepper. He also makes a mean Sinagang consisting of pork shoulder, bok choy, green beans, ginger, eggplant, tamarind, soy sauce and fish sauce. The chicken adobo he admits is an Americanized version made simply with soy, sweet vinegar, garlic, onion and black pepper. The Laing could give the best steak houses in the city a run for their money. It is basically creamed spinach cooked with minced pork, coconut milk, ginger, fish sauce, onion and garlic. And OMG, I could live on that stuff.
Sinigang
The chicken afritada consists of chicken legs braised in tomato, chicken broth, potato, carrot, yellow onion, celery and garlic. Pancit, I learned, is a noodle dish traditionally eaten at birthday parties. The long noodles represent long life. Kevin uses rice stick noodles for his version and cooks them down in beef broth until the broth has completely reduced. Then garlic, scallion and cabbage are tossed in which are lightly steamed by the hot noodles.
Pork and Chicken BBQ Skewers
You would think it couldn’t get any better than that but it does. AJ’s is known for their BBQ chicken and pork skewers. Nice fatty pieces with the skin left on lends a nice crispy texture. The skewers are marinated overnight with soy, sugar, and 7-up, then drained, seared on a flat top grill, rested, and then grilled once more over an open fire. The meat is smoky, sweet, and succulent.
BBQ skewers, Boba teas, Laing, Longanisa, Chicken Afritada, Pancit and Chicken Adobo
Guevarra says that every Filipino restaurant is different. To him Filipino cuisine means, “home cooking passed down from family.” His family comes from Pampanga, known for its good cooks, he says Guevarra is currently messing around with a lumpia burger to put on the menu. He envisions a patty made of lumpia filling topped with a special sauce that he says he is still dreaming up. If it’s anything like the rest of his food I will be first in line.
2275 San Jose ave, San Francisco, CA 94112