El Comal

If you can find this place in a storefront behind the car wash … You will be amazed at their food !!! A local told us that have the best sopapillas in town. Our food was wonderful and they treated us like royalty !!! Will be going back next time I go to Santa Fe, without a doubt !

I love all of the food here. The staff is always friendly. Great place to see someone you haven’t seen in a long time. My favorite is the American breakfast, which comes with ham bacon or sausage but I always substitute chiccharones. Side of chile with two eggs, papa’s and a sopapilla. Yum!

Great local spot.
Not as good as my favorite Maria’s but it is very good.
The salsa is hot and tasty. The green chili and red chili are great.
I had the breakfast burrito and it was good. One thing I would do is add one more egg and less potatoes.
Ronda had the cheese enchiladas with red chili and she said they were good.
All good.

A local favorite and I can see why. Where the locals eat for tasty food, large portions, big menu and unpretentious. Will be going back im the morning for breakfast.

What a local resource. This place was terrific. Rellenos stuffed with beef were exceptional, guacamole was good, with lots of cilantro. Good food, done exceptionally well. Could have had the A/​C set a bit cooler. It did seem to take a long time, but I forgot that after I tasted the food.

Ordered take out and was quite disappointed. For two burritos that came with no side beans or rice and one cheese crisp with chicken our bill was over $ 30 there were no chips and salsa to go and the red sauce was so hot it was in edible it taste like uncooked chili powder. the green was extremely hot but somewhat tasty. the tortillas were soggy and wet. Can’t recommend.

Chicken fajitas were good. Large portions for low price.
Good option for a quick authentic Mexican meal.

Service was great, with a very friendly staff. Absolutely fantastic salsa, hot enough to spice things up but tasty enough to not want to stop. Meal portions were generous and the menu fairly deep. Prices were very reasonable.

It is not very often I give 5 stars, but this local restaurant rocks.
The girls in the Mariachi band were so very nice and their sound was really great. They play every Sunday and Monday night at 6:30.
You can catch them at Tomasitas too, but I love the small venue of this restaurant.
The food was really great, service quick and friendly.
Awesome food, Awesome Music, Awesome Sangria.
Don’t miss out on this restaurant.

Eat where the locals go!
We were on the bus (which we were told was a shuttle, but more about that later), and I asked a few people where we could find good sopapillas (no sopapillas in Atlanta). A friendly man sitting across from me said El Comal, and it ended up being right across the street from
our RV park. All we wanted were sopapillas (my husband wanted them), and they happily served them up and they were delicious!
I really wish I’d eaten there for all my New Mexican food cravings instead of paying $$$ prices in the swanky part of Santa Fe – I mean, the food was good where we went, but probably no better than El Comal!

Stop in Santa fe for couple of days saw the good reviews we had comb plates and were not disappoint wonderful new Mexico mexican food I had Christmas on my comb

I would recommend visiting here. We were coming through and had breakfast, very good portions and actually I had a kids portion of the huevos rancheros an it was plenty for a child or small adult. So very flavourful. Thank you Unilocalers for leading us here. Genevieve waited on us with her gracious demeanor and lovely smile. The meals were hot and the coffee aromatic.

Green Chile is EXTREMELY tasty!!! I ordered Christmas on my enchis & the green was as tasty as red, which I love most! Chips are homemade & very good along with their salsa, which we liked very much. Great service, great food. We will always go back to this place!

OK so I went back the next night and had chicken filled sopapillas. The red and the green sauce on them were fantastic! The green was nice and flavorful but not overwhelming while the red has a richness and flavor with a punch behind it that was very good. A few cold beers and some of the home made chips and salsas and our group of 9 left happy campers.

I liked the idea of this place, but the eventual effects of my meal here weren’t so satisfactory, if you catch my drift. What’s great about this place is that it’s tucked away in a strip mall on Cerillos. There is a real authenticity to it. I will say that the red chile salsa that came with the tortilla chips was VERY spicy and very good!
For my meal, I ordered the chile rellenos. They are okay here, nothing special. The chiles were hard to cut into pieces, and they were placed on the plate in opposite directions, so it was tricky to find out where the stems were. The cheese inside the rellenos wasn’t that great, either. But the green and red chile sauce was pretty good.
My biggest complaint was how my gastrointestinal tract reacted the next day. Could have just been the luck of the draw, but man, I’m not certain it was worth it! Okay, yes it was. Good, cheap, authentic eats here.

The menu is nothing like what is displayed online on the Unilocal site, and the place is very unappealing in appearance. It is also about 2 blocks south of the location shown on Google maps, off the road in a strip mall

For out third dinner in Santa Fe, we passed on the places with hundreds of reviews. Carrie D’s review sold us (Thanks Carrie). When we arrived we almost did not eat here since there was no one in the restaurant on a Saturday night. I hope they do a good lunch and breakfast business. Their sign indicates they have been in business for a long time so I guess they are doing alright. At least I hope so. We had a good meal, in a small, clean, bright place.
To start with this was the best salsa so far. It was well flavored, rich with red chile. Sweetness and tartness were well balanced. Seasoned with salt, garlic and oregano, none of them overdone. It had pleasant heat but was not incendiary. It was thick and stayed on the totopos but was not obnoxiously chunky. As a bonus, no cumin! We asked for more and for more of the very good, home fried totopos. They were hot, tender and not greasy.
I went for the evening’s Valentina Especial. It was a large piece of skirt steak asada. It was not dead tender, but was very tasty and authentic. I had very good rich and dark red chile to eat with it and fresh, soft flavorful blue corn tortillas. It was served with a cup of frijoles de la olla that were delicious, cooked well and well seasoned. I also received a chalupa de camarones. There were four split and grilled shrimp with grilled onion and pepper and a daub of good guacamole. The only thing strange was that the chalupa was served in a fried tortilla cup instead of a masa boat. Maybe that is a local thing. This meal all worked really well together.
I also split some green chile stew with Bro J. Consistent with the other things, it was very good with tender pork, potatoes a little tomato and good flavors. We also split a cup of posole. It is simple with a little very tender pork, no chile. We thought it improved a little with the addition of some green chile and lime.
Bro J had carne adobada again and said it was very good, perhaps not quite as good as Tecolote that morning, but certainly acceptable. Ms T’s enchiladas do pollo were not a high point and underscore the reason I don’t order chicken dishes very often in Mexican restaurants. There was plenty of chicken but it was on the dry side and had no salt or seasoning. This is not unusual, I find. I let someone else order and if it is good, I might order it next time. Her refried beans were smooth and creamy with nice homemade lardy flavor. The rice was probably something like Uncle Bens. It was seasoned well, but I don’t like the plastic pellet type grains that you get when real rice is not used.
Our beer came with frosted mugs, very nice. You would expect perfect service in an empty restaurant and it was. El Comal is definitely a place to return to and an opportunity to get out of some of the over rated places where everyone feels they have to go. You really feel like you are getting close to home cooking.

Forget those fancy restaurants downtown unless you’re really just looking for ambiance. If you’re looking for a tasty Mexican /​New Mexican meal at good prices with great service, this is the place. This little café was clean — they even wipe off salt/​pepper shakers and honey dispensers after every meal. It was busy on a Sunday around 11, but there was no wait. I had the blue corn cheese enchiladas with green chile. Wow! Fantastic. Hubby had a combo plate with tamale, enchilada and taco. He said it was excellent. The sopaipillas with honey, which you can request with your meal instead of plain tortillas, topped it off. Our iced tea glasses were never empty due to our server’s attentiveness. Who would have thought we’d find such a gem next to a car wash. Good down-​home cooking. They serve breakfast, too. Guess we’ll have to try that tomorrow.

Ate here with two kids after reading a good review. The place was pretty hard to find, but we eventually got there. Overall the food was pretty good. The chips were very crispy and the salsa was tasty, but pretty hot. I had the tamale plate, with both red and green chile and found it to be tasty. The green chile seems very fresh, and the red chile is hot (but not overwhelming). My older son liked his frito pie with green chile, but my younger son was less impressed with his burrito. The sopapillas were tasty and large. We spent about $ 30 for three people, which included a beer and three waters. The price tag would have been less without the (marginal) guacamole and the $ 1 extra for chile on the kids meal, which did not get eaten.
Overall I would recommend this place if you are looking for a hearty meal away from the touristy areas, and you are not looking for fancy since this is a hole in the wall.

Stop #6 on the 10 hour/​9 restaurant eat your way through New Mexico extravaganza.
We quickly grew tired of the touristy area of town and asked a local where we could get some really authentic and genuine homestyle New Mexican food… he sent us to El Comal.
El Comal is a little «hole-​in-​the-​wall» restaurant located in a strip mall far from the touristy town square of Santa Fe. It is nothing fancy and kind of small, having less than 15 tables, but the food is amazing. We were greeted immediately by our server, and knowing we weren’t locals she took the time to explain the menu in detail. Everything looked amazing, but knowing we had 4 more stops to make on our eating extravaganza, we split one very large entrée. We ordered the following:
Tamale plate:
2 pork tamales Christmas style– the masa was tender, flavorful and had the perfect consistency. The pork was tender, juicy, and spiced perfectly. Both the red and green chili tasted homemade and were perfection with just the right balance of spice, heat, and smokiness.
Posole– a bowl of porky, hominy deliciousness. We had it with green chili which was a perfect compliment.
Rice– The best rice so far!
Beans– extra creamy, lardy, goodness.
Sopaipilla– very rustic and homemade. The texture of the dough was perfect.
I washed it down with a Modello Especial and the total for this amazing New Mexican food extravaganza was $ 13.95. This huge plate of food was more than enough for two hungry people to split and be very satisfied. The service was so warm and genuine and the food was so homey, eating at El Comal was more llke eating in someone’s home (who was a really good cook) rather than eating in a strip mall. I would highly recommend El Comal to anyone who is visiting Santa Fe. It is a bit out of the way but will introduce you to real New Mexican food and the genuine hospitality and warmth of the people who live there.