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. . .
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