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.

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.

In a stretch of Culver City on Washington, there is an interesting little building that always seems to be busy. It is both a nightclub and a Salvadoran restaurant and it is called El Baron. One night we decided to pick up some dinner from that odd little place to see what they had to offer. The menu has an interesting mix of Mexican and Salvadoran fare, but I feel like I can get good Mexican food all over LA and decided to go the Salvadoran route.

I found some interesting combos, which may or may not have been breakfast, but looked really good to me. Of these, the best-looking was El Peperecho. This is not to be confused with La Peperecha, which while seemingly only the feminine version of El Peperecho, happened to have a good amount of differences. This masculine dish consisted of grilled beef, rice, beans, Salvadoran sausage, avocado, cheese, two eggs and sour cream, all for nine bucks. What a deliciously unvegan mix that needed no changes. On top of this, I decided to get their loroco flower and cheese pupusa. One would think that the loroco flower was a misspelling of flour. After all, this menu was full of typos. But in fact it is actually an edible flower and I looked forward to consuming it.

We picked up the food at the nightclub/restaurant, which once again had people hanging out outside and looked busy. When I went in, though, the place was pretty empty. It was full of chairs and tables that could be easily moved for dancing and I figured it would be packed later. I grabbed the food, took it back to my friend’s and opened it up. My box was full of my unvegan delights and they were all separated out. This was great, because I could choose just what kind of food I wanted in each forkful. The sausage had a pretty tough casing and was moderately tasty. The beef was pretty good and since I wasn’t exactly expecting a steak, it was definitely worth it. The rest of the components of El Peperecho were also good. Nothing in the combo was amazing, but it also didn’t disappoint.

The best part of the meal was the pupusa. Although some cheese had leaked out in the cooking, the thing was not overfilled with it. The loroco flower was definitely an interesting taste. I’ve definitely never had anything like it in either texture or flavor, but I liked it. The pupusa was nicely balanced and was well-worth the $2 it cost me.

My meal at El Baron was a great deal. The food didn’t wow me, but it was certainly worth the price. And hey, how many opportunities do you get to grab a meal at a Salvadoran nightclub?

Tonight I ate dinner at Gloria’s Cafe in the Palms neighborhood of Los Angeles. Gloria’s specializes in Mexican and Salvadoran food and was recommended by a friend of mine. When I walked in, I saw someone had a bowl of soup with entire crab legs hanging out of it. I knew this was my kind of place. I was told that this was the Sopa de 7 Mares. Aside from that, they have quite an impressive menu with your typical Mexican fare of tacos quesadillas and such, enhanced with Salvadoran Pupusas. Speaking of which, have you ever noticed that a Latin American restaurant can never be just simply Peruvian or Salvadoran, etc…? There always has to be Mexican involved in some way. It’s similar with Asian restaurants. You can never seem to find a Cambodian or Vietnamese restaurant unless it also has Thai, Chinese or Japanese food.

With that said, after some time deliberating, I decided to go with the Avocado* and Chicken Burrito. I asked my waitress what was in it to ensure that it wouldn’t be tainted by vegetables. She told me that it was avocado, chicken, cheese and beans, with salsa on top. She also suggested that I try the House Special Burrito, which I promptly rejected after noticing it had lettuce, tomato and sour cream. I didn’t need any poor, defenseless vegetables ruining my dining experience. I eagerly awaited my meal while snacking on the delicious chips and salsa. It only took about five minutes for my burrito to arrive. On top of the burrito, I found tomatoes and onions, which goes by the much friendlier name of Pico de Gallo, meaning “rooster’s beak” in Spanish. Can I somehow sue Pico de Gallo for being vegetables while falsely purporting to be part of a rooster? This did not bode well, as I was forced to remove the vegetables before eating. Luckily for Gloria’s, the ill feelings didn’t last. The burrito was stuffed with well-seasoned, shredded chicken and everything else she mentioned. On the plate surrounding the burrito was a thin layer of red sauce, which was pretty good, but relied a little too much on the tomato flavoring rather than the spices that I prefer in a red sauce. All in all, I was quite happy with my meal, and at $7.50 it was hard to complain about the Pico de Gallo. I’ll definitely be heading back to Gloria’s again to try some of their other meaty meals.

*Avocado, being fatty and delicious, is a welcome addition to meat despite being a vegetable.

[mappress]