Latin Cuisine that Tastes like Home: Sofrito Latin Street Food
Comfort foods around here often look like a big plate of corn-breaded, pork-filled, and cheese-topped goodness. Lucky for High Point, South American comfort foods are much the same. At Sofrito Latin Street Food, you can expect hot corn arepas, savory chorizo, and queso-covered nachos. Sofrito’s unique offerings of Colombian and other Latin dishes came to be through the meeting of a couple of people with a passion for good food.
Before fate put a delicious, authentic Latin restaurant in our city, co-owners Angelica Smith and Steve White were thousands of miles apart, fostering a knack for entrepreneurship and more importantly, a devotion to cooking.
Angelica came to America from Barranquilla, Colombia in 2003. While her childhood was spent in the restaurant scene, her path to owning a restaurant of her own was not a straight line.
“I grew up in a restaurant. My dad had a restaurant when I was very little. I pretty much learned how to walk in it,” she says.
Surrounded by a family of talented cooks, it comes as no surprise that Angelica wanted to follow in her family’s footsteps, but her father’s guidance led her to cultivate a different skill first.
“When I finished high school, I told him I wanted to own restaurants, but he said, no, go to school for something else. So I went to school to learn English for two years,” Angelica says of her dad’s advice.
In San Diego, California, Steve was also kindling an appetite for the culinary arts. Similarly, he had family in the restaurant business to admire, as well as home-cooked food to inspire his future.
Steve says, “My grandfather actually had a restaurant in Texas. I guess it's just in my blood because I always loved cooking with my mom. Ever since I was little.”
His passion for cooking was put on hold as he pursued his love for our country, but after serving in the army, Steve found his opportunity to rekindle his love for cooking.
“I've always loved cooking. So when I went into the military, I knew I was gonna get money for school. Once I got out of the military, I used that money for culinary school at Scottsdale Culinary Institute in Arizona,” Steve says.
Angelica and Steve’s parallel paths finally crossed in 2013 in High Point. They were both in kitchens, Angelica at a hotel restaurant, and Steve in a retirement home, when Angelica decided it was finally time for her to start her own restaurant. Her idea for a Colombian restaurant led her to a small business bureau where she asked Steve, who had worked in all kinds of culinary jobs in kitchens across the country over the years, to mentor her and field her questions.
Steve did her one better, partnering with Angelica to make her Colombian kitchen, unique to our area, a delectable reality. As their business brainstorming went on, their personal relationship grew and Angelica and Steve were married, turning their restaurant idea into a family-run restaurant idea.
“But it was actually two years after that conversation that we really sat down and started putting together the recipes. We went to Colombia and we tried a lot of food there. Steve cooked with my sisters. He ate our food, and he had a better understanding of how it tastes, how it's prepared, and how we should serve it. And then we came back, put together the menu, and then opened at the mall. So our idea was, you know, to see what happens,” Angelica says.
As it turns out, what happened was that Triad residents had a new beloved restaurant. For their first three years, Sofrito was run in the Four Seasons Mall of Greensboro. Angelica and Steve loved their crowd of customers, and became close with some regulars, but after their second year, they knew they needed to make the move to their own restaurant. For the past three years Angelica and Steve have been living the dream of running their unique Latin restaurant here in High Point. And if the pair of restaurateurs had any concerns about having to meet and serve an all new crowd of customers at their High Point location, that concern quickly vanished when opening their doors in High Point brought in familiar faces along with the new ones.
The other charm of the food court that followed them all the way to their very own restaurant was customers sharing the menu descriptions. While at the food court, they found that new customers, unfamiliar with the different styles of Colombian foods, would start out by asking what items like arepas and empanadas were. Then, Angelica and Steve would treat them to thorough explanations, walking newcomers through the unfamiliar menu, the differences between other Latin countries’ versions of similar dishes to the unique preparations in Angelica’s region in Colombia. And finally, when the newcomers get a taste of Sofrito, they come back and tell other folk in line every little detail they learned, spreading the cultural knowledge of the yummy dishes before they even take a bite. For Angelica and Steve, the enthusiasm of the returning customers teaching new ones about the menu makes every day at Sofrito worth it.
Angelica says, “That's the best part. The reaction from the customers and how they explain the food. One of the things that I enjoyed the most at the mall was when we were very busy cooking, and a regular customer was in line waiting for the food. Another customer came and said, what do they sell here? And then there was always our regular customer jumping in and explaining the whole menu from the beginning.”
Now, word of mouth echoes around High Point, but if you haven’t heard yet, Angelica and Steve will be glad to explain their menu a hundred times over if you’re having trouble picking the best sounding dish out of a whole menu of great options.
A special feature of Sofrito’s menu is the multiple countries represented through the selection of dishes, and the rotation of specials further spotlights the variety in Latin food. Angelica and Steve carefully cultivate their menu through offering dishes they know and love, as well as finding inspiration in the stories customers bring of their international homes and travels. From Steve’s original advice to Angelica of selling empanadas, to a menu that is a tribute to community and Colombia, Sofrito has become an emblem of seeking unity in the uniqueness of a diverse community.
Having come from the comforts of her home in Colombia to a brand new country, you might expect Angelica to have plenty of anecdotes about the drastic change in everything from language to food, but instead, Angelica notes that what seems foreign at first is often not that different at all.
“We think that, well, our food is different from other countries. It's not; we eat the same thing in all the countries. And you'll find that corn, especially in Latin America, is eaten everywhere. The food that I grew up thinking was just my Colombian food, I realized that it is also from other countries,” Angelica says.
Angelica described how she grew up enjoying corn fritters, and thought she was leaving behind access to her home cuisine when she moved to the states, only to find out that southerners love corn fritters too–we just call them hush puppies.
When going out to eat, people tend to shy away from unfamiliar words on the menu, but the similarities in taste, like corn fritters and hush puppies, showed Angelica and Steve that the only thing stopping customers from discovering their new favorite foods was realizing how similar it really is to the foods they already know and love. That’s where the American interpretation comes in.
Their daughters, Maria, Ashley, and Casey, work in the restaurant alongside Angelica and Steve. Angelica’s daughter, Maria, went to school for baking and is the talent behind setting up the baked goods at Sofrito, while Steve’s daughters, Ashley and Casey, cook and wait tables, bringing a special southern twist to Latin dining. The perspective of someone raised in America cooking serving Latin food is that they are more attuned to what their southern customers are familiar with.
“Like carnitas,” Angelica says, “It’s pulled pork. That’s what it is–the same concept. Steve cooks it for hours in a special machine, then it all falls off the bone. We pull it, and it has garlic and other seasonings, but it's the same concept. And to people here, pulled pork is not so foreign."
"Everything that is on the menu was put in there because we love it."
Angelica Smith, Co-Owner of Sofrito Latin Street Food
Angelica says, “We just thoroughly love what we do. I want people to know that everything that is on the menu was put in there because we love it. And we totally love talking about anything we cook with the customers. This is not a job for us. We make what we love, and then we sell it.”
So when folks come in looking to go out of their comfort zones in search of comfort food, at Sofrito, they’ll find that a “hey y’all” at the door can turn into realizing that international eats might taste like home after all.
Discover our High Points,
The HPD Team
Photography by Kelli Gowdy Photography
Making High Point Discovered Possible
High Point Discovered is a 501(c)3 – a non-profit that exists solely for the growth and betterment of our city. Our staff of talented writers, photographers, and creatives works hard to tell the stories of our city so that you can connect to businesses that need you as patrons, non-profits that need you as givers, and – most importantly – neighbors that need you as friends. Our content is always free to our readers (that's you!) and free to the incredible entrepreneurs, artists, educators, and changemakers we feature.
We exist to communicate the stories of our city to connect our citizens and catalyze economic growth. But we need your help to continue. When you give to High Point Discovered, you're giving to support citizens – just like the ones in this story – who are making the city we call home better.
If you enjoy the content brought to you by High Point Discovered, consider giving today.
THIS STORY BROUGHT TO YOU BY:
