Beacon Hill Pupusas

On Wednesday, I took a trip up to Beacon Hill for a job interview. Alas, I did not get the job, but while still high on the possibility and dying for a lunchtime bite, I noticed a clapboard advertising pupusas across the road (as best as I can remember, this is near 14th and Beacon, inside an interesting groceries that seems to cater to both the Mesoamerican and Chinese communities).

A pupusa, for those of you not fortunate enough to have lived in El Salvador, or, failing that, been dragged to storefront shops or taco trucks in search of past memories, is essentially a tortilla that has been formed around a filling. The person making the pupusa pats out a more or less tortilla shape, then fills the middle with chicharron, beans, and/or cheese before forming the rest of the tortilla around the filling. The pupusa is then fried up and served nice and hot. Pupuserias generally have a big jar of curtido available for customers to help themselves. Don't ignore this. It's a cabbage salad, more or less, enhanced with hot pepper and fermented slightly. It makes a nice crunchy accompaniment. This taqueria also had bottles of green salsa that could clear your sinuses. The pupusas were glorious, the beans nice and goopy, the cheese melty and just a hint of the pork. And all for $4.