11
EZTHE WASHINGTON POST.
FRIDAY, AUGUST 30, 2019three-cheese blend oozes onto the
flat-top and solidifies into these
irresistibly crispy-and-chewy
nuggets. The pupusa fillings bor-
row from tradition (beans and
cheese, loroco and cheese) and
push the tradition forward
(shrimp and cheese; spinach,
mushroom and cheese). Either
way, your pupusa will be plated
with the kind of cheffy flair usual-
ly reserved for restaurants in
Shaw or Penn Quarter.
The Salvadoran influences may
not be immediately apparent, or
well understood, without a deep
background conversation with
Alvarado. I would come to learn
that San Alejo’s tamales de pollo
are prepared with chicken stock,
oil and a lot of painstaking labor,
resulting in a dish that’s more
corn mousse than masa log. Papas
locas looks like something you
might order after a late night on U
Street, but the appetizer is a be-
loved Salvadoran street snack: a
pile of thick-cut fries that some-
how maintain their crunch de-
spite being splattered with ketch-
up, mustard, mayonnaise and an
aged Salvadoran cheese — a
clown’s face of condiments.
The entrees are pure, bone-
deep comforts, starting with the
parillada San Alejo, a sizzling faji-
tas-style platter of grilled meats,
shrimp and a mild, finely ground
Salvadoran-style chorizo sausage.
I wish I could tell you the secret to
the marinade, but whatever the
kitchen uses to tenderize and fla-
vor its beef loin and skirt steak, it
leads to the finest versions of
lomo saltado and carne asada that
I’ve sampled in recent memory.
Even the salmon fillet, grilled well
past the pink, moist center that I
prefer, was saved by the accompa-
nying aioli, this piquant and
smoky zigzag of sauce.
San Alejo, like many Salvador-
an restaurants before it, does
wander beyond its own borders.
You’ll find Mexican-style enchila-
das (with thicker, Salvadoran-
style corn tortillas and a razor-
sharp salsa verde mellowed some-
what with roasted garlic) and
even Honduran baleadas, this
half-moon crepe in which a tooth-
some housemade flour tortilla is
packed with steak (or chicken),
refried beans, eggs, avocado, coti-
ja cheese and a sweet drizzle of
sour crema. The baleada is every
bit as good as the one at El Catra-
chito in Silver Spring.
Alvarado’s touch with dishes
beyond the Salvadoran table re-
minds me of his original desire to
become a doctor, a profession
famous for first doing no harm.
He now carries a stirring spoon,
not a stethoscope, but he clearly
understands that this oath ap-
plies as much to food as to medi-
cal care: He makes sure that no
dish suffers under his care — and
that everything he touches tastes
better in the end.
[email protected]ect with their first Ta queria Haba-
nero on 14 th Street NW. Their
motto: “99% Mexican.” I f you ask
a server, “Why only 99 percent?”,
she will likely give you a deadeye
stare and respond, “Because we’re
located in Washington.”
At San Alejo, where he flits
between the dining room and
kitchen dressed in an apron over
his checkered shirt and khaki
pants, Alvarado is doing much the
same for Salvadoran cuisine. He’s
uniquely qualified for the job.
After arriving in the United States
in 1999, first thinking he might
become a doctor, Alvarado even-
tually found work at J osé Andrés’s
ThinkFoodGroup. He s pent a dec-
ade with ThinkFoodGroup, in-
cluding Cafe Atlantico and the
Jaleo in Penn Quarter, mastering
almost every position in the back
of the house, from dishwasher to
prep cook to pastry assistant. He
considers Katsuya Fukushima,
the former chef at Cafe Atlantico
and now a partner in the Daikaya
Group, to be one of his mentors.
San Alejo was his attempt to
“re-create the Salvadoran eatery
in Maryland,” Alvarado says. He
wanted to serve the “the food [we]
used to eat as children.”
The menu has a whole section
devoted to pupusas, the stuffed
masa cakes that are handmade in
the open kitchen and browned on
a hot griddle. Their shells are
appropriately thin, frequently
leading to ruptures in which thenot the least bit surprised that it
took place in Alvarado’s restau-
rant. Alvarado is the brother of
Mirna Alvarado-Montero, co-
owner of Ta queria Habanero, the
first name in Mexican cooking in
the District and College Park. The
siblings are co-owners of San Ale-
jo, named for the small Salvador-
an town where they were raised in
a family that sold tortillas, em-
panadas, yuca de chicharron and
other homemade delicacies to
help make ends meet.
For years, the lines between
Mexican, Te x-Mex and Salvador-
an cooking have been hopelessly
blurred in Washington, the result
of Salvadorans fleeing the strife in
their home country and opening
restaurants here in the 1980s and
beyond. Their goal wasn’t neces-
sarily to sow deception, but just to
make a living by enticing Wash-
ington diners more familiar with
tacos, nachos, combo plates, gua-
camole and the like. But more
than 30 years since those refugees
first arrived, Washington still has
countless restaurants in which
pupusas share the same menu
with enchiladas and fajitas.
Brother and sister have been
working to untangle the ances-
tries of these cuisines, which ad-
mittedly share some DNA. A lvara-
do-Montero and her husband, Dio
Montero, a native of Puebla, Mexi-
co, started the reclamation proj-CASUAL FROM 10PHOTOS BY DEB LINDSEY FOR THE WASHINGTON POSTTOP: Haydee Rodriguez and Gloria Lopez prep pupusas at Comedor y Pupuseria San Alejo. MIDDLE: A favorite dish is fries with ketchup,
mayo, mustard and cheese. BOTTOM: Carlos Alvarado spent 10 years working for José Andrés before opening his own restaurant.