Pupusas are one of the most popular foods in El Salvador, and now you can get them in Manhattan at Cabalito on the Lower East Side. Zagat Editor Kelly Dobkin filed the following review for NY1.

Pupusas have long been popular at NYC food trucks and street carts. Randy Rodriquez brings the Salvadoran corn cake brick-and-mortar with his Lower East Side shop, Cabalito.

"I was working in restaurants a lot and thought I should take on and own my own place, and I decided I wanted to do that but if I was going to do it I wanted something closer to my background. The idea came of pupusas, and the fact that there are none in Manhattan, really. It’s thriving on the west coast and lacking on the east coast and we wanted to present that to New York," says Cabailito owner Randy Rodriguez.

Pupusas are a thick, doughy tortilla made from masa, which are lightly griddled, stuffed with a variety of fillings and traditionally garnished with pickled cabbage, onions and a tomato sauce.

"It’s a gluten-free corn masa tortilla and inside of it is your choice of various meats, vegetables or cheese. It just takes over the scene really once you cross into the border of El Salvador," Rodriguez says.

The tiny Lower East Side shop offers some other Salvadoran specialties as well.

"We offer revueltas. That's a mix of pork, bean and cheese,” Rodriguez says. “We have various drinks. The most popular ones are fresco de chia, which is similar to like a fresca de chan. Chan is a seed that's in El Salvador, that’s harder to get here, so we substitute it with a chia. We also have a kolashanpan, which is a Salvadoran soda. The notes are more like citrus and bubble gum. It’s harder to get and it’s also just the exact replica of soda in El Salvador. 'Cabal' is a slang used in El Salvador which means 'exactly' or "exacto,' 'on point,' 'right on,' something like that. Cabalito is just a little touch we add to it. We like to say that it’s a representation of the restaurant, it’s ‘cabal,’” he adds.

It’s really tasty. The masa is super fresh. The pork is kind of a nice balance of sweet and savory, which mixes perfectly with the beans and cheese. I love it.

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