Elvirita Cemitas Poblanas

mid-chow (i'm amazed I stopped long enough to take this). Also note the papalo

Boyle Heights, Los Angeles

Another LA discovery courtesy of an in-the-know local (sort of.  My friend from home read about this place in Johnathan Gold's famous street eats column in LA Weekly.  His New Yorker profile is recommended reading)  A cemita is a sandwich associated with Puebla, Mexico, containing pork, papalo (herb), avocado, and grated queso fresco.  It was great.

Tacos Villanueva

eaten off the trunk of my car... like on The Wire

Des Moines- NE 14th, across from Fazoli´s



Among DM taco trucks, Villanueva reigns supreme.  They have another truck on E. Grand between 15th and 16th and both are awesome, authentic mexican food.  Tacos served with fresh cilantro, onions, lemon, and a grilled pepper on the side.  Lately they´ve started toasting the tortillas a little so they have a great crunch to the outside.

pupusa heaven

Pupuseria San Miguel
Washington, DC

This is a place that is really special to me. Back when I lived in NY, before I discovered the vendors at the ballfield vendors or the flea market, I could only ever have pupusas on my occasional visits to DC to see a friend from home. He explained that there was a large Salvadoran population in his neighborhood (Columbia Heights, though this place is in neighboring Mount Pleasant) and thus a lot of pupuserias, because if there's anything Salvadorans like to eat, it's pupusas- my impression is that it's their iconic national food. A pupusa is hard to describe if you don't have a frame of reference from other Latin foods (like Colombian arepas). . . it's kinda like a stuffed corn cake, or a less-doughy stuffed pancake (and not sweet. not sweet sweet, anyway. It's definitely "dude sweet," though, as in " dude, sweeeet!"). Pupusas are generally stuffed with cheese and beans, meat, or vegetables (like green pepper'esque loroco) and served with coleslaw that has a spicy red salsa on top.

The picture doesn't really capture all of this because I was so hungry I started eating and had to go back and do a little food staging/remediation after the fact. If you look closely, though, you can see some cheese oozing out the sides. Pupusas alone are alright, but combined with the slaw/salsa, they attain greatness. What's not to like about something cheesy, spicy, meaty, fibrous (slaw), doughy but also crisp? I hadn't been to this place for a few years and was disappointed at the comparatively skimpy portion of slaw and salsa. Still, I was hungry and nostalgic enough to not care. . .

An outpost of urban cool

Habana Outpost
Fort Greene, Brooklyn

I set out w/ my gf on a hot morning to explore my old neighborhood. After a very long and ultimately unproductive walk to a hole-in-the wall roti shop in Bed-Stuy that was closed, we met up w/ a friend of mine at Habana Outpost, a pan-Latin spot that attracts the neighborhood's hip crowd- youngsters and parents alike. Patrons order inside but the food is actually prepared in a truck that's parked in the courtyard. Music plays and the scene is festive. I think there are solar panels. I was still living in the neighborhood when the place first opened, and was drawn by the space and the fact that they had a bike-operated blender. It was always broken when I'd go before and this time the story was that they only used it on the weekends.

The grilled corn is a trademark dish. It has a generous dollop of mayo, grated cheese, some sort of seasoning powder, and lemon- very good but what wouldn't taste good w/ all that on it. The quesadilla was fine too. The space and the scene are the main attraction, but the food is definitely good (no matter how cool a spot it was, no one would come if the food were bad)

courtyard and the truck where the magic happens

Grilled corn and chicken quesadilla with white sangria.
cameo appearance by my friend's torso