I’m not the kind of guy who judges a book by its cover. So just because a restaurant looks good on the outside doesn’t mean the food will actually taste good. But there is at least one exception and that is Flor de Izote. Located at the sketchy end of North Hollywood, I took one look at this place and knew it would be awesome. Why? Orange! Everywhere. The entire exterior was orange and so was the interior. And not surprisingly, I was wearing orange that day, so I was pretty much camouflaged. So yes my favorite color is orange, and hell yes I was excited to get down with some food in an orange room.
Flor de Izote is a Salvadoran restaurant, and I don’t know if it is always like this, but our waitress decided to only speak Spanish to our table (maybe because my coworker asked for a table in Spanish?). Nonetheless, fortunately everyone knew enough Spanish to order. The menu looked delicious, and since it was Salvadoran I concentrated on the pupusas. This was a real pupuseria and the options were plentiful. I decided to go with three different types. One was their chicken and cheese, another was their loroco flower and cheese and the final was their revueltas. The loroco is a strange flower that tastes good with cheese and dough, while the revueltas was stuffed with chicharron (pork), cheese and beans. And they were all about 2 bucks each.
When they arrived, those doughy, cheesy patties of food looked delicious. I tossed some salsa on and started digging in, having no idea which one I was biting into. The first turned out to be the chicken, which was tasty, but needed some Tapatio to really give it some flavor. The next was the revueltas. This delicious blend of beans, cheese, meat and dough made for quite a pupusa. And with a few dashes of Tapatio, it was even better. Finally I took down the loroco pupusa. The loroco is such a strange flavor and a really strange thing to eat (really who eats flowers?), but it also tasted quite good. These were some grand pupusas, but if I had to choose one to return to it would be the revueltas. It simply had the best flavor.
I also tried out some fried plantains dipped in refried beans because someone had ordered them on the side. These tasted great and I loved the mix of salt and sweet that they delivered to my mouth. Someone even ordered some crazy Salvadoran dessert. I have no idea what it was called, but I tried it and it was pretty good. Again, there was a mix of salty and sweet that I just love so much.
So, Flor de Izote was a big success and merited the amount of orange paint it used. Plus, ordering in Spanish made me think that some of the stuff I learned in high school and college actually worked.
