SoMa Inn Café

"It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to paint it." ~ Steven Wright

http://somainncafesf.com/


Place: SoMa Inn Café
Location: 1082 Folsom Street (between 7th and 8th Streets)
Hours: open for breakfast Monday - Friday at 7:00am; open Saturday at 7:30am; and open Sunday at 8:00am
Meal: Greek Omelet ~ Feta cheese, black olives, green onions, and tomatoes, served with homefries or hashbrowns, toast or two pancakes

(Today is Mothers Day, so there is that.)


I am not even sure if there is an actual "SoMa Inn" or not (I did not see any kind of inn/hostelry
establishment attached to this restaurant), so the nomenclature SoMa Inn Café may be entirely made-up. There is always the possibility that the name "SoMa Café" may have already been taken; however, I don't really know if that is the case or not. I suppose it does beat the completely supererogatory redundancy of a place named "Bistro Restaurant at Cliff House"~ no matter how great their (World) Famous Cliff House Popovers(!) are.

I had walked by this place two weeks ago when I was serving my annual Jury Duty at the Hall of Justice nearby on Bryant Street. I was thinking about checking them out either for breakfast before the trial started for one of the days or as another idea for lunch if the trial went longer than it did (which ended up being three days of utter boredom too long as it was).[1] The place looks like it is much larger from outside and could hold about half as many more than they do, but the actual seating consists of: three four-to-five seater tables, six two-to-three seater tables, nine counter seats, and two sidewalk tables for two. 

The breakfast menu is pretty extensive and offers a decent array of items. Some of the other menu items that I was looking at were: Mediterranean Omelet (baked eggplant, sweet peppers, tomato pesto sauce, and Feta Cheese; this was going to be my back-up plan); Banana Hotcake 'n' 3 Berry Sauce (two jumbo buttermilk pancakes stuffed with fresh banana, raspberry, blackberry, blueberry, and strawberry with powdered cinnamon-sugar and whipped cream; I count four "berries" there, but, of course, the only true botanical "berries" in that list are banana and blueberry); or Banana Streusel (French toast topped with fresh banana, 4-berry sauce, whipped cream and powdered cinnamon-sugar). I would always have ordered the pancakes or French toast with a side of homefries, too. Additionally, there were a few specials that were not listed on the standard menu to include: Eggs in the Nest ("Hot from the griddle, two white French bread grilled with nested eggs served with apple wood smoke bacon and our home fries potatoes" and probably with a Béchamel sauce or such, etc.) or Crab-cake Benedict (I will let you determine what that one may entail).

This omelette was prepared as more of a "scrambled eggs with st*ff in it" and folded over (which is the only way I can ever make an omelette at home myself) and not like a normal omelette where all the ingredients are folded inside it. It was made with lots of Feta cheese, but the black olives were just your typical canned, sliced variety (authentic Kalamata olives are always much better, especially when you are calling it a "Greek Omelet"). 

I went with the homefries as my potato side choice, and I was very pleased at the outcome. Their version of homefries included not only white and green onions and red and green bell peppers, but slices of zucchini. This is an addition that I had never seen before, but enjoyed very much. There was also a decent "house seasoning" of spices and herbs added to it, too.

I chose pancakes as my bread-side choice. Duh! I will choose pancakes over plain ol' toast any (and every) day. I can "cook" my own toast at home, thank you. And these were two regular-size pancakes, too. They don't go cheapo on you and make two small pancakes for you to make up for it all.

For condimentary supplements, SoMa Inn Café has both Tabasco® Brand Pepper Sauce (Original Red Sauce) and Tapatío® Salsa Picante Hot Sauce on all the tables. (Speaking of repetitious superfluities, doesn't "Salsa Picante" already mean "Hot Sauce" in Spanish? Perhaps, "Tapatío®" means "Bistro Restaurant" en español.) Once again, I just used some of my own The Wiltshire Chilli Farm Hell Mouth on one half of the potatoes and some Mango hot chilli sauce on the other half of the potatoes (Thanks again for both, Cindy & Greg![2]).

That this joint offers two different types of breakfastary potatoes from which to choose, which is always a major plus (it seems that old Captain Plus was finally promoted), and pancakes over toast makes this a good place for a return visit some day… but, due to the distance, probably just not "some day soon". 


Glen Bacon Scale Rating: Greek Omelet ~ 6.5 (this is factoring in both the choice of pancakes and their very nice rendition of homefries; with authentic Kalamata olives, this would have been a 6.8-6.9 probably)


1. By the way, El Borrachito was found guilty on both counts of his DUI/DWI. The poor jamoke had a 1.6 Blood-Alcohol Content. Seriously?! Why even waste our time taking this to trial? (I am not saying that I found the guy "Guilty" for completely wasting our time, but it was a nice bonus, at least.)

2. Unfortunately, I will probably be retiring both of these bottles within the next few weeks. I have already extended the "Use Within Opening" date by more than double. I have only used about one quarter of the Hell Mouth bottle thus far (Does that make me only half an optimist or pessimist?) and about one half of the Mango hot chilli sauce bottle. 

At least I was successful in using up the other two bottles, Winter chilli sauce and smoked Chipotle chilli sauce, entirely.