While down at the Grand Central Market, my girlfriend (that’s for you, Joel) remembered she had seen one of the stalls on The Best Thing I Ever Ate on The Food Network. This stall was Sarita’s Pupuseria, which specializes in…wait for it…pupusas! You know, everyone’s favorite Salvadoran food. I am a huge fan of pupusas and while I may not know what Salvadorans look for in terms of a good pupusa, I know what this unvegan likes. The pupusa featured on that show was the basic bean and cheese, so we ordered one to split just to find out if it could hit the list of the best things we ever ate.
Pupusas here were made completely from scratch, so it took a while for them to fry ours up on the griddle, but it was great to see them put it together and I definitely don’t mind waiting for freshly-cooked food. When it was ready, our number was authentically called in Spanish and we grabbed our pupusa. My girlfriend destroyed her half by putting cabbage on it, but I kept mine pristine and cabbage-free.
In the process of eating, I found that I was a fan of this pupusa, but could it really qualify as the best thing I ever ate? Sadly for Sarita, this was not the case. In fact, strangely enough I have eaten better pupusas in North Hollywood. So what was the problem? Well, I’m glad you asked. The pupusa had some strangely distinct flavor that I was unable to put my finger on. It might have been coffee or who knows, but whatever it was, I didn’t want it. On top of that, I felt the dough was still, well…doughy. I like a pupusa that you can pick up in your hand and eat, but this one didn’t offer that to me. In general, it was still quite tasty, just not worth making the cut as one of the best things I ever ate.
So the moral here?
Don’t believe everything you see on TV.