Cuscatlan Salvadorian Cuisine

After Baltimore Snowball, we killed some time by going to North County Fair (I know it's a Westfield mall now but I'm calling it by it's old name #$%@!)...Now that was a mall I hadn't been to in decades! Like waaaaay back in college!

Traffic wasn't so bad going back to Escondido where we planned to have dinner...

at a Salvadorian place on Grand Ave...

Chula Vista Lemon Festival 2013

This past Sunday we did a quick visit to the Chula Vista Lemon Festival.

(sign that was on the window of Sweet Sisters Bakery)

We hadn't gone in a few years and were curious about the food offerings...

Chula Vista Lemon Festival - Part 2

But wait! There's more!  Ooh, garlic onion rings and garlic fries!

Here's TC's frozen lemonade

Here was another booth selling pupusas. They were giving free samples too. Their pupusas were also cheaper - the first place was selling them for $4 each! That's highway robbery! It was $3, which is cheaper but still kinda pricy for pupusas especially when you can get them for just $2 at El Salvadoreno. But hey, we wanted pupusas today and they there right there!

I ordered three pupusas to share - they were filled with pork, cheese and beans. It was fun watchin the women pinch off the masa dough, stick in the filling and then flatten it onto the griddle...


The pupusas were served with curtido on the side...

Here's another view...

I heardthis place was pretty good, Comal. Check out their sign - "Birria  y Barbacoa"! I think I'll go back for the Barbacoa.

This place used to be an educational supply store. Then it changed to an Italian place, Manga Bene. Now it looks like it's still an Italian place but with a different name.

These looked pretty good by the line was waaaay too long to stand in! It was so hot that day!

More food booths...

Here's a taco place...

Here's a booth that was selling custom made light plate switches....Pretty cool. I want one with Rick James on it. Or better yet, Don Knotts. Or Clarence Rutherford from "Leave it to Beaver".

Not...TC was disappointed because there were none with a horse or horses on them.

Here's a live band playing some classic rock...

If you ever go to the Lemon Festival, it's usually the 2nd weekend of August and it's held in downtown Chula Vista. You can park for free in the parking structure behind Marie Callender's (from F Street) or if you're coming from the other way, near Futtbuckers Fuddruckers. Park your car for free and in the shade and just walk less than a block to the festival.
Here's the Black Crowes with Jimmy Page on guitar (man, he looks so old now!) doing their rendition of Zep's "The Lemon Song":

Squeeze this...

El Salvadoreno with Lotus

[sometime in early July with Bert, TC, Lotus and her daughter]

We haven't been to El Salvadoreno in awhile, so it was about damn time we went again. I'd been thinking about their Pupusas..If you click on their link, you can see the menu (seen below) in all of its inhumanly mouthwatering and Douglas Sirk-like steak glory (the 'steak' is a reference to John Travolta ordering one of those in 1994's "Pulp Fiction" at Jack Rabbit Slim's). Go ahead and click and prepare to have a mouthgasm. See my previous two posts on El Salvadoreno here.
The curtido (pickled cabbage and carrot slaw) with two kinds of salsa. The one of the left is not so great. It's too watery and not even spicy. The brighter orangey one on the right is the one you want to dump all over your food.
Bert's soda is the Kolashampan, which is from El Salvador. It tastes like pineapple. The drink on the right is TC's "ensalada" which is pineapple juice with chopped fruit (apples and one other kind, which I don't remember). Very refreshing, but I personally don't like my drinks to have chopped up shit in them. Like boba - I don't like boba. I don't want to chew on things while I'm supposed to be drinking.
Here's our pupusas - "Revuelta con todo" - with everything, which means cheese, beans, jalapeno, pork and loroco (an edible flouwer found in El Salvador). I really love the texture of these pupusas - they're a bit chewy.
My salad was originally ordered without dressing. I guess the waitress wasn't paying attention because it came with dressing. I asked her to please send me a plain one since that was what I ordered. It took forever getting that one. Maybe she was pissed off or something for the extra hassle, but shit. She should have gotten it right the first time. Hopefully, she wasn't like the waiters in "Waiting" and didn't do anything nasty to it. Or like Horatio Sanz's character (aka "The French Toast Guy") in "Road Trip" where he rubs, no, GRINDS French toast in his crotch out of spite. Yeah, let's hope none of that happened with my salad. I saw no signs of logies in them or hair. Bert's - The Bisteck Encebollado a la Plancha (Grilled steak and onions) with rice/beans/avocado. We both liked this plate - meat and onions? Yes please.
Lotus had the Salpicon de Res (Salpicon beef - diced and minced beef) with rice and beans. The meat wasn't really spicy but not being a connoisseur of salpicon, I don't know if it's meant to be spicy or not.
Why the hell is this picture in here? It's Bert's food again but from another angle...I wished it came with more avocado slices!
TC's food - the fried chicken with rice and beans. It was, uh....kind of boring. The chicken was kind of burnt looking. It was a thigh piece with part of the back. She liked the skin - nice and crispy. Oh to be young again and not have to worry about cholesterol.
I ordered one of these the last time we were here. Here's my Baleada with carne asada inside...This is a fkg big tortilla chock full of MEEEEEAT. So good. You must have one.
Go ahead...lick your computer screen. You won't regret it.

El Salvadoreno & Mille Feuille revisited

[Update - Mille Feuille closed and is now Chocolat Cremerie as of 2011]


[I'm finally posting this about a week later on 1/22]

Last weekend, we went back to El Salvadoreno but this time with two other families (these are the same friends we did holiday party rotations with). This time we'd be able to sample more dishes - that's the advantage of having more people when you go out to eat - more variety.

One of the husband's ordered the "Ensalada" drink which is pineapple juice with chopped fruit. The large size is $4 and the kid size is $2. The kid size was pretty big already.
Bert got the El Salvadorean soda which was super sweet:

We ordered 6 of the Pupusas Revueltas (the mixed one with pork, cheese, loroco, jalapeno, and squash) and a bunch of other stuff. However, before anything came, we were given the pickled cabbage/slaw called "curtido" along with two types of salsas. The lighter red one on the left was really weak and watery. Don't even bother - well, you could try it but it's fnot that great. The one of the right - now that shit had some kick to it. This is what you want to try!

Our pupusas - the regular ones are $2 but these were $2.25 because it had everything in it - still pretty reasonable, I say.

I really liked the crunchiness of the curtido and the spice of the sauce whiled melded quite well with the crispy, chewy pupusa which oozed cheese and pork and other ingredient...

One of the husband's got the Bistek Ranchero which came with rice, beans and a slice of avocado:

Bert got the Bistek Encebollada (Steak with onions):

One of the wives got an item from the breakfast menu - the Casamiento, which was black beans and rice mixed, chorizo and eggs, and plantains with crema. That was a huge plate of food.

She also ordered more sweet plantains with crema. I wasn't too fond of these because I don't like the soft mush texture of banana...but the kids liked them.

The other husband got the Salpicon de Res which came with rice beans, and avocado. The salpicon wasn't cold (which I thought it was supposed to be), the meat had chopped cilantro, radishes and lime juice in it.

Instead of getting an entree, I got a bunch of smaller items with the intent to share them (I did!). These are Pasteles de Res (ground beef with peas and potatoes). I liked the pastry shell, nice, crispy and fried.

The two kids who were with us both got this item from the childrens' menu. This was an overly fried ass piece of chicken with soggy ass fries. These sucked. I tried one of the fries. Awful. Our daughter TC ate a little bit of of everything - she mostly shared with Bert.

This was another item I got - the Baleada with Chorizo and Quesillas (El Salvadorean style cheese). I thought it would be small since there wasn't a sense of scale in the menu photo. I thought it would be like a small taco. WTF!I really liked the flour tortilla because it was handmade on the premises. This nearly covered the whole plate. Hmmm, I just realized I didn't post the picture of the other wife's food but it was what Bert had the first time we went here, the Carne Guisado (the beef stew!). I'm too lazy to post it, cut and paste and blah blah blah.

Here's the interior of that baleada:

After all that food we caravanned over to Hillcrest for dessert at Mille Feuille. Here it is - the site of the old old Gap on the corner of 5th and University in gay mecca, Hillcrest.

I love how clean and modern it looks inside, although you can'tg really tell from this picture. I'm so anal, I always have to get a photo of the menu!

Bert and one of the children got the Black Forest Truffle (Chocolate Sponge cake , Cabernet Panna Cotta, red velvet sponge, brandied cherries, bittersweet dark chocolate mousse, dark chocolate glaze). Note the descriptions are taken straight from the website.

The dessert of one of the husband's - The Jack O'Lantern (Dark chocolate and Grand Marnier sponge cake, layered with pumpkin mousse, with a dark chocolate glaze):

Two of the kids got the Dark Knight (Chocolate sponge cake, mousse, spray and glaze). This is what Bert got the last time (see older post):

The shop's namesake dessert, Mille Feuille (Flaky puff pastry layered with vanilla rum custard topped with chocolate & white fondant icing). I didn't try this because it seemed really pedestrian to me - puff pastry with custard. I'm sure it was good but I wanted something different.

My dessert - the Paradox (An almond dacquoise and hazelnut-praline feuilletine cookie layered with dark chocolate mousse & topped with a white chocolate vanilla bean glaze). I really loved this - hazelnut and dark chocolate is such a good combination, plus the bottom layer of the dessert was crunchy! It was like eating an upscale candy bar.

My friend's macarons - Hazelnut Praline and Tiramisu (I think):

French Press Coffee (my friend's husband holding the press and my other friend's husband in the background):

Bert's Coffee:

My iced Apple Pear Green Tea. You can see my macaron trio there - the Pistachio-Raspberry, the Chocolate, and the Hazelnut Praline!

My friend's hot tea (same flavor as mine):

What was fun was we had the kids sit in a separate table, away from us. Initially when we arrived, there wasn't enough space to seat all nine of us in the same area, but I had the idea of having the kids have their own private table. They loved it - they got to have fancy desserts, drink water from stemmed glasses and use a cloth napkin (instead of paper, ha ha). Can't wait to eat at both of these places again!