THE WASHINGTON POST.
FRIDAY, AUGUST 30, 2019EZ10
Casual Dining
BY TIM CARMANC
arlos Alvarado approaches my t able and asks
if I’d like to try the weekend special, a big
workingman’s bowl of sopa de pata. The
soup, the manager and co-owner says, re-
quires two days to prepare, which perhaps explains
why the dish is available only on Sundays, the day of
rest for everyone except the cooks at Comedor y
Pupuseria San Alejo, an extraordinary Salvadoran
restaurant tucked into an ordinary strip center in
suburban Maryland.
The steaming bowl placed in front of me boasts an
imposing s tack of vegetables and garnishes, each cut
and arranged to the kitchen’s specifications. There’s
corn on the cob, sawed
off like tree trunks and
submerged in the
swampy soup. Chayote
squash sliced into long,
overturned canoes, onto
which ringlets of jalape-
ño cling to life. Squiggly
lengths of cabbage and
carrot molded into a
wobbly crown of pickled
curtido. Chopped herbs
tossed willy-nilly across
the surface of the soup,
like an explosion of con-
fetti, nature’s party pop-
per.
The dark broth that
encircles this castle of
vegetables contains mys-
teries of its own: Morsels
of long-simmered cow’s
feet, as soft and warm as bone marrow. Pieces of
honeycomb tripe, its texture serving as a gnarly foil
to the silky collagen of the cow trotters. I taste
tomato, cumin, lime, even the faintest whisper of
heat. This vegetable and offal soup, you quickly
realize, offers ample evidence of the brilliance of
Salvadoran cooking, a largely subsistence-level cui-
sine in which cooks have learned to extract every last
drop of flavor from the kinds of off-cuts routinely
snubbed in this land of plenty.
Salvadorans, I should note, are the region’s l argest
immigrant group, by a significant margin, and yet
after nearly 15 years as a food writer in Washington,
this is the first time I recall slurping sopa de pata. I’m
SEE CASUAL ON 11Untangling
Latin
American
cuisines
In an area dominated by Mexican
fare, this Salvadoran gem shinesDEB LINDSEY FOR THE WASHINGTON POSTIf you go
COMEDOR Y
PUPUSERIA SAN
ALEJO
1819 East-West Hwy.,
Hyattsville, Md., 240-714-
3342, sanalejomd.com
Hours: 9 a.m. to 9:30
p.m. Monday through
Thursday; 9 a.m. to 10
p.m. Fr iday through
Sunday.
Prices: $7.50 to $15 for
tacos, burritos,
quesadillas and entrees;
$1.75 to $6 for pupusas,
nachos and appetizers.Though Salvadorans are the D.C. region’s largest
immigrant group (by a significant margin), their
food — like this lomo salteado sauteed beef loin at
Comedor y Pupuseria San Alejo — isn’t as
available as Mexican or Tex-Mex food.