Restaurant Review: When “Hole-In-The-Wall” Restaurants Become a Hole in One

I have yet to meet a single person in South Texas that doesn’t like Mexican food. If you find one – please let me know! Another thing that I have learned about food in South Texas is that sometimes, the places that look questionable almost always have the best food around. For this restaurant review I am going to discuss, you guessed it, Mexican food. Specifically, Mexican food from Norma’s Place in Adkins, Texas. While this restaurant is not hard to find (it is right on 1604, just down from Bill Miller’s and Tractor Supply), it sometimes throws guests off as to how good the food really is because it is just a long, gray building from the outside.

To start with, when you walk into the restaurant, the interior has a fairly modern look with accents of classic Mexican décor with a little bit of décor honoring different events throughout the city such as the San Antonio Rodeo, or football playoff games. This is a big reason that the restaurant has been around for so long. They have spent a long time embedding themselves into the community and making sure that when you walk in, they greet you like you’re family. In fact, the hostess greeted me and my boyfriend by name when we walked in and asked where the rest of our family was.

The service is almost always amazing, except for when they get very busy at lunch and in the evenings. They also seem to always be short-staffed, but the waiters and waitresses that have stuck around for a long time are amazing people that actually enjoy working there. Now, no matter how the service may be whenever you go, the food is always fantastic and so full of flavor. The best thing about the food is just how fresh everything tastes. The avocados, limes, and salsa always taste like they were harvested right before they were brought to the table.

What is a good meal at a Mexican restaurant without chips and salsa? I mean, come on, the chips come out piping hot and the salsa tastes like a garden with the perfect amount of heat. Once you have filled up on the chips and salsa, they bring out your food. I ordered street tacos with beef and chicken fajita. You can’t tell me that taco plate doesn’t look absolutely delicious. Again, the food was just amazing. The beef and the chicken fajitas had so much flavor and were super savory. It is hard to explain the way it tasted, other than letting you know that whenever I crave street tacos, I crave them specifically from Norma’s, not anywhere else. The only problem that I had was

that they forgot my grilled onions, but our waiter, who is also the owner, went to the kitchen and grilled some onions for me himself and brought them out within two minutes of me even asking him about them. 

The one complaint that I, and other people have when visiting Norma’s, is that they are quite a bit more expensive than another restaurant a few miles down the road. To get my order of street tacos and my boyfriend’s cheese enchiladas, it was $25 before the tip. We can go to the other restaurant and order the same thing for about $15. I consider that to be a pretty big difference when it comes to it being the exact same food. However, it does make for a great treat/casual date night every so often. Highly recommended!