C Casa Review
Erasto and Pablo Jacinto move on past Border and open a new restaurant in Oxbow serving artisan tacos.
644 1st Street
Napa, CA 94559
C Casa food
C Casa is basically an upscale taco shop (er..."artisan tacos") although they have some other stuff in there like rotisserie chickens which I need to try one of these days. They took over Rotisario's spot after Rotisario decided not to renew its lease. I wonder if they got the rotisserie chicken roaster from Rotisario when they left.
Anyway, here are some examples of the tacos. Tortillas are handmade. The picture below is the skirt steak (lower left) with grilled onions, cilantro, queso fresco, and salsa picante. Flavorful from the ingredients, yes, but the skirt steak itself was fairly under-seasoned. I don't care how flavorful your add-ons are; it's hard to compensate for an under-seasoned piece of beef. The green one is the seasoned ground buffalo which was interesting.
And here we have the spiced lamb with goat cheese, avocado tomatillo salsa, and micro-greens (orange) which was good. And also the chilorio (ancho chile rubbed shredded beef) with lime crema and citrus marinated red onions. Probably my favorite in all of these was the chilorio as I could get a feel for the meat more (and much better seasoned) as it stood out more from the ingredients on top.
The tacos are fine and everything, and you can tell they're trying to come up with something interesting and novel. But you know, at $5-$6 per taco, I can't really say I'd rather have one of these tacos than say two from Tres Hermanos which in their simpler way had more flavor. If you want a fancier taco, I like The Pearl's steak tacos more and are a bit cheaper. In both cases, I think the meat stands out a bit more. Maybe I just like simpler tacos that aren't so tricked out.
We're perfectly fine eating there if we're in Oxbow and want a quick bite to eat. In fact, we'll go back just to try out the rest of their menus. But so far, it probably won't be the first place that comes to mind if we're looking for tacos.
C Casa setting and service
Well, it's in Oxbow, so there's only so much you can do with the setting. You can either sit directly outside of Oxbow and pick up your food through a little window in the back of C Casa. Or you can sit somewhere else in Oxbow. They give you a little buzzer like Taylors (er...Gott's...) so you can grab a table.
I think they'd only been open for about 2 weeks when we first went there. A lot of tourists are in the area now and they had a pretty good line setup and looked like they were moving customers through at a pretty good clip. So, it looked like they were dealing well with the trial by fire there.
Price of our meal
4 tacos, chips and salsa, two agua frecas + tax = $32
Other C Casa reviews and links
