Tomasa Rodas fills masa during the course of making pupusas at El Salvadoreño in Mendota.
Eric Paul Zamora / The Fresno Bee

Tasty debut
The pupusa, one of El Salvador's staple foods, heads north.
By Joan Obra / The Fresno Bee
Wednesday January 12, 2004

Everyone in El Salvador knows the pupusa. This thick tortilla, typically filled with combinations of cheese, beans, pork and a green vegetable blossom called loroco, is a staple of restaurants and home kitchens. Served with a thin, red salsa and curtido, a cabbage and carrot relish, pupusas are snacks, lunch, dinner — and sometimes even breakfast.

Pupusas are uncomplicated, everyday food in El Salvador. And if marketers of Latin American food have their way, pupusas will become typical fare in the United States.

For years, Salvadorans in the United States have enjoyed their national food at pupuserías, or little restaurants that specialize in pupusas. But as U.S. Hispanics demand more pre-prepared foods, companies in El Salvador have started shipping frozen pupusas to cities with high Salvadoran populations, including Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. Add the growing American fascination with regional Latin American foods, and a pupusa craze could be in the making.
One of the signs? Goya, the Hispanic food giant based in Secaucus, N.J., plans a nationwide release of frozen pupusas in April and May, according to Joseph Perez, the company's vice president of purchasing.

Another sign is rising U.S. sales of Hispanic convenience foods, such as dinner kits and frozen items. Revenue grew from just less than $250 million in 1999 to $505 million in 2004, according to a November study from Packaged Facts, the publishing division of MarketResearch.com.

"'Hispanic on the run' — from pseudo-Mexican creations such as breakfast burritos to more authentic items such as Salvadoran pupusas — appeals to our changing national taste buds, populace and demand for convenience," says Don Montuori, acquisitions editor for Packaged Facts. "If you consider the fact that nearly 90% of 'tweens told researchers that quesadillas are an 'everyday food,' it's no wonder that Hispanic cuisine is poised to eclipse Chinese as the favorite foreign food for Americans."

Don't expect the fuss over frozen pupusas to put pupuserías out of business, however.

For pupusa lovers, the taste of frozen isn't likely to replace a craving for fresh ones. And at central San Joaquin Valley pupuserías such as Restaurante El Salvadoreño in Mendota and Rincon Salvadoreño at McKenzie Avenue and Fresno Street, customers can customize their flavor combinations. Both restaurants serve similar pupusa fillings — cheese, loroco, spiced pork and beans — and both serve versions of Kolashampan, a vanilla-flavored cola from El Salvador.Advertisement
But no two pupuserías are exactly alike. While Restaurante El Salvadoreño uses only masa, a corn dough, Rincon Salvadoreño also makes pupusas de arroz, ones made with a rice dough. In El Salvador, there are even more choices. Some pupuserías stuff their pupusas with fish. The resulting pupusa is bigger, like a calzone, says Laureano Aguillón, owner of Rincon Salvadoreño.
"My mother, she made them with vegetables inside," says Aguillón, who has owned Rincon for almost four years.
Pupusas also have different shapes, depending on the restaurant.
"Some places make them bigger," Aguillón says. "Some places make them smaller."

Wherever pupusas are made, one thing is likely: They are shaped and cooked by women, called pupuseras.

In El Salvador, "the women make everything, and the men just sit down to eat," says Daniel Guevara, grandson of Restaurante El Salvadoreño owners Jorge and Tomasa Rodas.

Tomasa Rodas, who hails from San Juan Opico in El Salvador, has been making pupusas for her family since she was about 8.
Her family recipe has been part of the Valley's cuisine since the early 1990s, after Jorge Rodas visited the Mendota area and discovered Salvadorans hungry for their national food. The Rodas family left Los Angeles, and Tomasa Rodas started selling her pupusas from a taco truck. In the late 1990s, they opened their Oller Street location.

Today, Tomasa Rodas still works in the kitchen. She presses spiced pork and Monterey Jack cheese into masa, seals the dough around the filling and slaps the ball of masa between her palms to form a thick disk.

She fries the pupusa on a griddle, turning it with a spatula to ensure even browning on both sides. She plates it with curtido and salsa, and sends it into the dining room.

This pupusera doesn't see the frozen pupusas as competition.
As pupusas sit, their texture changes, so "they don't taste as good as the fresh ones," Tomasa Rodas says through her granddaughter, Judith Crespin, who also helps at the restaurant.

And although a frozen pupusa earns points for convenience, Salvadorans in the United States often want more.
"A lot of people say they like it better when they're here" at the restaurant, Crespin says. "They say it feels like they're back in El Salvador."

Tomasa Rodas fills masa during the course of making pupusas at El Salvadoreño in Mendota.
Eric Paul Zamora / The Fresno Bee

The reporter can be reached at jobra@fresnobee.com or (559) 441-6365.