Sol Food: Good for the Soul

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It’s been several hours and I’m still thinking about the food I ate and the restaurant I ate at for lunch today. Although the restaurant is located in San Rafael, it reminds me of Puerto Rico. You can’t miss Sol Food with the bright lime green exterior. There’s a story there in itself. I’ll leave it for the end of the blog.

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My friend visiting from New York was a great sport and went to boot camp with me this morning. I’ll call him my Visiting Food Companion (VFC.) After a two hour work out, we were ready to eat. We actually were on our way to a Mexican restaurant when I was almost blinded by Sol Food. I recalled my colleague mentioning this Puerto Rican restaurant several months ago. She’s Puerto Rican, so I made a U turn and changed our destination.

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At Sol Food, you grab a menu, order at the counter, take a seat, and your food gets delivered to you. The rotisserie pork rib plate caught my eye and it came with rice, beans, organic salad, fried plantains, and garlic bread. There was an option of black or pink beans. I went with pink which are kidney beans cooked with kalamata olives. I took a bite off the rib and was in heaven. The pork was crispy, juicy, tender, a little bit of fat, and a whole lot of flavor. I loved the white rice which was fluffy and has flavor not seen in Asian rice. The pink beans were good too. I was happy to have a salad to balance off everything else on my plate. I remember eating the type of plantain served here in Puerto Rico. The plantains are fried, smashed, and refried. It was great and hardly oily. Everything was delicious including the simplest thing as garlic bread.

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My VFC ordered the chicken sandwich. It was free range baked chicken with ham, cheese, sautéed onions, tomato, lettuce, and cilantro-lime mayo. He enjoyed the savory combination of ingredients.

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To drink, I had the orange mango ice tea. It was delicious like there was fresh mango and oranges in it.

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My VFC decided to end the meal with a cafe con leche which he thought was “heavenly”.

I was very happy I made the U turn to Sol Food and I can’t wait to go back to San Rafael with a group of friends to try more of the quality authentic Puerto Rican food at Sol Food.

Earlier I mentioned the lime green paint. I thought I would end the blog with a photo of a letter that is posted in front of the restaurant.

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The opinion expressed in the letter definitely doesn’t reflect the views of this blogger.

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