Cemitas Poblanas Don Adrian is a little hole-in-the-wall Mexican food restaurant in Van Nuys. Situated on Victory Blvd. and right next to a Laundromat, you probably wouldn’t even notice this restaurant if you weren’t looking for it. But once you try their food, you definitely will not miss this little gem again.

Cemita Poblana Don Adrian is named after its most popular dish, which is a sandwich originally from Puebla, Mexico. The bread is similar to a toasted hamburger bun and the one I ate was filled with marinated steak, avocado, red onion, cilantro, radishes, and oaxaca cheese. The grill up the meat to order so the sandwich is nice and hot when you eat it. The marinated steak alone is some of the best I’ve had, but paired with the crispiness of the bread, the crunch and bitterness of the red onion and radishes, and the cool creaminess of avocado, this cemita becomes something spectacular. If marinated steak isn’t your thing, they also offer 23 other types of cemitas, included vegetarian options, breakfast cemitas, and a few with head cheese if you want to go really authentic.

I also tried their carne asada tacos. As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t need/want a lot of pomp and circumstance with my tacos, and the Cemitas Poblanas Don Adrian tacos are certainly not fussy. It is a generous portion of four tacos with meat, cilantro, and radishes. Normally I like onions (not radishes) in my tacos, but the radishes added a fun bitterness and crunch, similar to that of an onion, so I didn’t miss the onions at all! The salsa bar was a bit lacking for my taste, with only two salsas (a red and a green) and limes. The tacos were good, I would definitely eat them again, but the real showstopper of this place is its namesake, the cemitas poblanas.

The restaurant has a small parking lot directly west of it, but I prefer to bring a few quarters and use the street parking on Victory Blvd.

14902 Victory Blvd.

Van Nuys, CA 91411