Today’s journey for the ultimate taco takes me to the small town of Somis. The place is called Somis Café and is connected to the Somis Market. The cafe has been around for a real long time and there is a large latino base in this area so all the signs are positive as far as this place serving up some good food.
The café, from the inside and out certainly looks the part. Lots of Latinos eating inside, kinda run down interior, tables with old colored chairs that look like they belong in a kindergarten classroom……..everything seems good to me.
I order my tacos, except, I order one carnitas and one carne asada both of which are not on the menu. What is on the menu as an option is a ground beef taco, that’s not a good sign.
There is no salsa bar here, but as I’ve said before, it’s certainly no deal breaker. The guy waiting tables brings me a squeeze bottle filled with a sort of salsa/hot sauce and a dish full of salsa fresco. Both of these lack any heat what so ever, very disappointing. The good thing was they had the spicy pickled veggies; like carrots and jalapenos. Cutting up one of those jalapenos at least gave me a little heat to work with. Another big letdown was the requisite (at least, in my mind) bottle of Tapatio, or some other hot sauce that should be sitting on the table but was not. If you ask for some ( as I did ) they’ll tell you they don’t have any. Yikes.
Okay, the tacos: my Carnitas were good, they were shredded and had a little crispiness to them and I would say that I liked these tacos a lot. The salsa on top was just the salsa fresco, same as what was in the dish that was put on the table. That did not add anything to the taco flavor wise. Not bad, not good, just bland.
The carne asada was really bland, just not much flavor. The meat was tender but that did not rescue this taco from blandness.
Somis Cafe did not score a lot of points with me, they have way to many things going on that are wrong. The most disappointing being that, with the overwhelming Latino population in this town you would think that the food here would really shine, and it does not. One positive that I will give them is that the food does have a homemade type of taste. I can imagine my aunt Norma cooking in this style at her house but even my aunt knows how to add flavor, spiciness and heat to her dishes. Since I'm only commenting on the tacos, I can say, without question, that they were lacking flavor in a big way. 1.5/5 stars.
Somis Market
3319 Somis Road
Somis, CA 93066
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