By Frank Sabatini Jr. | Restaurant Review 
As droves of restaurants and cafés across the nation aim to maximize their support of local purveyors, Seekey Cacciatore of Toma Sol Café in Mission Hills gets a top rating for her efforts.
Starting with the coffee and extending into salads, Paninis and knockout soups, she taps into San Diego’s home front with beans from Café Moto, greens from Garden of Eden and breads from Sadie Rose Baking Company.
Setting herself further apart from other coffee cafés, she presents a rotating selection of soups by Decker Brothers Gourmet, started by a pair of siblings who moved here from the East Coast before they began wowing us with creations like tomato-blue cheese bisque, split pea with citrus and chili mole. They’re among the savory potages appearing on Toma Sol’s menu this month.
Even the pastries and bottled desalinated H2O are homespun, hailing from Baked in the Sun and Solar Water, respectively. Although if you opt for an organic soda in a punchy flavor like Mandarin orange, look no further than the line of Maine Root fizzies she carries from “The Pine Tree State.”
“It’s hard to be 100 percent local, but I’m trying as hard as I can,” says Cacciatore, who jumped careers from environmental consultant to café operator in November. In doing so, she attended a barista school in Portland, Ore. to gain a firm understanding on making traditional coffee drinks, though admitting, “I’m more of a tea drinker.”
However, don’t underestimate her creamy, steamy lattes made with espresso or chai tea and completed with customary patterns inscribed into their foamy crowns. Served in jumbo ceramic cups, the café’s bright interior and orange walls indeed leave you feeling as though you’re drinking, or “taking from the sun,” as the Spanish meaning for Toma Sol implies.
Visiting a week before the new selection of soups arrived, we soaked up the warmth from tomato-lentil with garlic, thickened also with minced carrots. That’s off the list by now, but if the Deckers ever decide to hold classes in soup making, I’ll be the first to enroll.
From the panini list, we ate with gusto a roast beef and cheddar with horseradish mayo and a ham and Swiss with mustard. The condiments and fillings were applied thinly — as well they should for allowing the essence of the rustic, toasted ciabatta to speak. In Italy, a panini is a stripped-down sandwich, which means that if you get one bursting with too much meat or cheese, you’re not eating this celebrated snack in its truest form.
Other panini options include turkey and Jack cheese; a vegetarian using feta, pesto and sun-dried tomatoes; and a breakfast version available anytime of the day, made with eggs, cheddar and house-made chipotle mayo.
The food menu is rounded out with hearty salads, one of them a quinoa medley hailing from Ganosh Gourmet in Coronado. But if you’d rather wash down leafy vegetation with your coffee fix, another commingles organic greens with feta, walnuts, cranberries and Kalamata olives.
Speaking of produce, Toma Sol serves as a pickup point for the Community Supported Agriculture program, from 9 to 11 a.m. every Sunday. The event draws dozens of customers while attesting to Cacciatore’s commitment to flaunt the bounties originating from our own backyard.
Toma Sol Café
301 W. Washington St. (Mission Hills)
619-291-1159
Prices: Coffee drinks, $1.70 to $3.85; soups, salads and paninis $3.55 to $6.25
