http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/food/358550_eat11.html                                                              April 10, 2008

	JOSHUA TRUJILLO / P-I
Pupusas, a traditional Salvadoran dish, may look like pancakes but they are filled with beans, cheese and/or pork. At only $1.90 each, they make a tasty bargain. Spoon curtido, which is a bit like slaw, on top to add tang.

Tacos Pupuseria offers a great Salvadoran platter

By LESLIE KELLY
SPECIAL TO THE P-I

Check us out in the December 2007 issue of Colors NW Magazine.

http://www.colorsnw.com/absolutenm/anmviewer.asp?a=119&z=41

Taste Buds - Guanaco's Tacos

December 2007

A.V. Crofts

Copyright ColorsNW Magazine

Don’t let the name Guanaco’s Tacos fool you. While this new eatery on Brooklyn Avenue in Seattle’s University District will whip you up a mighty tasty taco, the centerpiece of the menu is hinted at by the term “Guanaco,” translated from Spanish to mean “little llama,” a term affectionately bestowed upon the citizens of El Salvador (one of the smallest nations in the region) by their Central and South American neighbors. Here’s the secret: Guanaco’s Tacos is a Salvadoran pupuseria in disguise.

Pupusas – or hand-shaped tortilla pockets filled with cheese, meat and beans – have been a favorite staple in El Salvador for thousands of years; the word “pupusa” is derived from the word “pupusawa,” given to the dish by El Salvador’s indigenous Pipil tribe. Pupusa’s regional popularity continued to grow throughout the 20th Century, to the point where now El Salvador celebrates Día Nacional de la Pupusa, or “National Pupusa Day,” each November 13.

For Guanaco’s Tacos owner Eduardo Revelo, every day is National Pupusa Day. “I want people to get to know Salvadoran food,” he says. “The idea is to piggy-back on Mexican food.” El Salvador is a small country with limited diaspora, so introduction to pupusas in the United States has grown slowly. This began to change in the 1980s when El Salvador plunged into a bloody civil war, scattering Salvadorans like Revelo and his family, who fled their seaside homeland in 1984 and have remained permanently in the United States since. As Salvadoran communities sprouted up in cities across the United States, so did the pupusas.

For Revelo, who has a baby face as round as his restaurant’s trademark dish, sharing Salvadoran cooking traditions was a natural choice. “I really liked cooking and interacting with people,” says Revelo. “I’m good at making people feel at home.” After high school in Seattle, Revelo attended culinary school at South Seattle Community College and earned a degree in hotel management at the University of Las Vegas, followed by cooking stints in restaurants across the greater Seattle area. “I put together the menu at Guanaco’s and can cook everything on it except the pupusas.”
Wait. So who cooks the pupusas?

“My grandmother always cooked pupusas for us,” says Revelo, though it doesn’t appear that the recipe jumped a generation. Never fear, Revelo employs an efficient and talented collection of cooks who can pat out pupusas in their sleep. “All the ladies are Salvadoran,” Revelo says. “One even had a restaurant in El Salvador that served very traditional dishes.” (Look for new menu items in the coming months that reflect these traditional offerings.) This frees Revelo to hold court at the counter, where his congenial interactions with customers clearly demonstrate that Revelo has found his true calling in the hospitality industry.

The counter is the place you want to start you pupusa adventure at Guanaco’s, where you can pick up menus and then find yourself a seat in the cozy 11-table establishment. There is a good chance that the television in the corner will be broadcasting an international soccer match and the busy “pupusinistas” will be cooking to infectious music in the back kitchen.

Pupusas Guanacas ($1.60) can be ordered made from either rice or corn (corn is traditional, and the rice pupusa is called pupusa de arroz) and filled with soft cheese, pork carnitas, or refried beans. The cheese pupusas can be served with or without loroco, an herb that Revelo buys imported from Guatemala though it grows widely in El Salvador, and which I recommend for its delicate hints of extra flavor.

You can order multiple pupusas for a meal, or round out a dining experience with other menu items. For instance, the Pastelitos Guanacos ($4) are another traditional Salvadoran snack that until recently, you would have to hunt high and low for in Seattle. This dish takes cornmeal spiced with achiote, a Salvadoran seed crushed into powder for cooking (I find the flavor reminiscent of paprika), folds the dough into little elongated balls and stuffs them with beef, onion, and carrots. The three balls are fried quickly and served with Salvadoran condiment called curtido, which to my taste is a cross between sauerkraut and coleslaw, with a spicy kick. I loved the pastelitos’ crispy exterior followed by savory interior filling – a Salvadoran samosa.

I only sampled it once, but while the Yuca ($5.50) appetizer held great promise for me, it remained unrealized. Not everyone is a fan of this starchy tuber, but when cooked right I could eat it for days. Guanaco’s serves its Yuca either frita (fried) or cocida (boiled) and accompanies it with curtido, sliced radishes, tomato wedges and a handful of bite-sized cubes of cooked beef. My dining companion ordered it frita, and my mouthful felt undercooked, with the various dressings underwhelming. I’d sample it again boiled though, to see if it improved the dish.

Guanaco's has recently added sweet and savory tamales to their menu and having sampled the sweet, I give them a strong recommendation. A sweet tamale is served without filling, but with a savory side of refried beans and a generous dollop of rich crema over top. Guanaco's tamales came to the table steaming and melted in my mouth.

Finally, while it may be the part of the menu borrowed directly from Mexico to woo skeptical customers, Guanaco’s Grilled Marinated Steak Taco ($2.50 each) were absolutely delicious. The soft tortillas, the minced onion, rough chopped cilantro, shredded lettuce and spoonful of cheese made for a wonderful handful of happiness. Tacos are served with either flour or corn tortillas; chicken, fish or pork tacos are available as well.

For those interested in graduating from a lunch snack to proper dinner spread, Guanaco’s has a small selection of entrees for those with a big appetite to fill. The Onion Smothered Steak Guanaco ($13, or $12 without onions) spotlights a grilled skirt steak buried in a glorious heap of nearly caramelized onions, fluffy spiced rice, perfectly cooked black beans, queso fresco and hot corn or flour tortillas. The steak was pounded thin and cooked to tender perfection, and I couldn’t get enough of the beans and rice.

Another dinner standout is the Grilled Chicken a la Guanaco ($9.95), which like the steak, pairs a generous thigh and drumstick chicken serving with the rice, beans, and unlike the steak, a standard iceberg lettuce salad. The chicken was cooked to tender and juicy goodness thanks to a savory marinade – not a dry bite of chicken to be found.

Another chicken dish that shouldn't be missed is the Sopa de Gallina, a hearty chicken soup that upon first sip had me transported back to New York City delicatessens. There is something wonderfully restorative about a well made chicken soup. And Guanaco's hits all the high points: rich broth, a sprinkling of rice, generous cuts of chicken (with the bone, be still my heart) and carrot coins and onions. The bowl is more than enough to share for two or a full meal for one, and comes with two homemade tortillas, fresh off the griddle. This soup alone could get me through a Seattle winter.

While Guanaco’s offers a standard run down of soft drinks for $1.75, why not branch out and try its homemade Horchata ($1.50), a sweet drink made with rice, heavy on the cinnamon, and darker than you typically see. If you don’t have a taste for sweets, horchata isn’t likely a good drink of choice, but I find it a wonderful antidote to the homemade hot sauce Revelo offers to every table.

Sweet is the theme in Salvadoran desserts, and while I’m known to have the sweetest sweet tooth of them all, Guanaco’s Torrejas Guanacas ($1.50) brought me to my knees. The dish consisted of tooth-achingly saturated sweet bread topped with mile de panela (syrup) and cinnamon. Far more enjoyable were the sweet Empanadas ($4), a dessert rendition of what is often a savory dish in much of Latin America. Looking like a nest of three dark brown eggs, these pressed plantain balls are filled with a sweet cream custard, very lightly fried, and then dredged with cinnamon and sugar. Guanaco’s empanadas were rich with the mashed plantain and gooey center, all the while encased in a sweet shell of sugar and cinnamon. A happy ending to any meal.

Revelo is hopeful that with Guanaco’s proximity to the University of Washington and hordes of hungry students, word will spread fast about this little taco joint that serves up a mean pupusa. Even though Guanaco’s only opened doors three months ago, Revelo’s bait-and-switch approach appears to be working well. “One girl came in and bought one pupusa,” he says, “Then, before we closed she brought back 12 of her friends and they each had a pupusa.”

That’s the way you win Salvadoran food converts: one pupusa at a time.