date: 9/21/10
location: st. paul
grade: a/a-

this place is getting more notice from far-flung 'burbs and such through some pretty good review on yelp. all of us here tend to concur with them. though short on ambiance (think more friendly hole in the wall) it's big on some pretty damn good food. the menu partially features specialties from el salvador, but also has mexican items which seemed a bit odd to me, like sushi on a chinese menu. if you're going for that, you're probably in the wrong place to begin with.

all of us went for various pupusa (a salvadoran and manana specialty- a thicker corn tortilla stuff with cheese, beans and/or meat) platters- i think in large part these made it the winner of the 2009 best central/south american restaurant in city pages. it's $8.50 for three of them and you also get sides of rice, beans and cabbage salad. if you do get this (and you should at least the first time you go), either split this and one or two items with the people you're with or get other stuff to go, as this is pretty large and filling- each pupusa is about the size of a large hand. most of the portions were big - we took a lot of it home.

and again, tasty. my pupusa selections were plain cheese, cheese with loroco (which is kind of like a caper- an unopened flower bud that's used as an herb) and cheese with beans. i prefer the cheesier versions (quel surprise... not....), the bean one was a bit heavy. the cheese ones were things i would like to eat again often. the loroco was a nice surprise- the 'green' taste of it was an intersting in a good way addition to the cheese. the pork versions (or mixed pork versions) were also excellent, i was told. the pupusas come with a tomato sauce which resembles a tomato water than what comes to mind when you think 'tomato sauce.'.

the beans were smooth and creamy, and the rice itself was perfectly cooked plain white rice (no weird tomato stuff) but it had some sort of weird veg mix in it (square carrots, corn, and a few other things) which i was not all that interested it. the cabbage salad- think uber cole slaw with more interesting and hot herbs, spices, and vinegar dressing- was so good i took a bunch home to put on barbeque sandwiches and other things.

we also tried a few other items- the chicken tamale ($1.50) had cooked masa (a la el salvador vs. the mexican uncooked), which i prefer, it seems. the fried plantains and fried yucca were good, though we were unsure why the yucca and random pork bones on it (i think they were around $6.50 each but could be wrong). the horchata (don't know the price on that) with cornstarch instead of the usual. it tasted like cold chai tea, in a good way.

service was friendly and had a lot of forks (one for each plate, be it a side or a main dish, which was odd, but there you go)- a missing item (yes, mine) was corrected asap. i didn't need a water refill as the glass was huge, so there's that. and perhaps it is off the beaten path a bit (more so if you got the same weird google maps direcitons i did featuring a short detour through some not particularly scenic warehouses of st. paul), but well worth a stop, if not more than one.