El Salvador - A Week of Worldly Food

 June 19-24

Hello everyone!

El Salvador has its food of choice. Pupusas are ubiquitous, and are sacrilege to speak against. The capital, however, is a metropolis made up of millions of people from a variety of different places around the world. Surely they’ve brought their own food to town? This week, the last of the school year (and one in which I couldn’t be bothered doing any cooking), was time for me to try to discover global hidden gems within San Salvador.

Fondue!

Taiwanese steamed buns

I say hidden because non-Salvadorean food is easily found. The problem is that the vast majority of it is either Mexican (your tacos, burritos and so on) or American fast food chains such as McDonald’s, Pizza Hut and Wendy’s. I doubt major cities in the United States have this many Wendy's chains.

Look how many there are in the city!

A taste of Americana

There are other places which we have tried, such as Indian and Middle Eastern. Food joints selling curries and falafel, however, are commonly found across the world. I wanted to dig a little deeper into the soul of San Salvador.

Inidan from Swagat

Tacos from Tacos Hermanos

So here is how my week of gastronomic, global travel across El Salvador’s capital went:

Monday

El Rinconcito Cubano

Cuban

The clue is in the name. I’d seen this place when running - I pass it on the route from my house to one of the two large parks near Santa Tecla. I drove across and parked my car in front of the house next door, before my entrance was announced by the loud noise you sometimes hear when you enter a shop.

An inauspicious entrance

An older lady steps out and I start enquiring about the food. I eventually ask her what she recommends. She prattles on for a while about a special she does, in which I heard the word ‘pork’, and then adds the word ‘mojito’. Interestingly, she doesn’t sell alcohol, so this is a virgin version.

A fizzy, fresh mojito

I sit down, briefly being the only person in the restaurant. Two cyclists stopped for a post-ride mojito and a chat but it was only me dining in. The amount of time it took for my food suggested that things were being made from scratch, and that the lady was the only person involved.

The mojito was fizzy, fresh and very minty. Very nice. My food came a while later - I think it was the menu option above. It was worth the wait.

Yum yum yum

Fried plantains, flavoured rice and salad are all well and good, but when combined with what is essentially a steak of pulled pork, they are a dream. Even when the dream was interrupted by me being asked to move my car so those aforementioned neighbours could get out, it merely meant having long to savour the steak which would fall away at the touch.

Some similarities, some differences

The lady herself seems fascinating - I found her accent a bit difficult to pick. I got the impression that she moved to El Salvador from Cuba in 1996 and set up a restaurant soon after, moving to her current place a few years ago. It is definitely worth a visit.

A web picture of many different dishes which I want to try!

Tuesday

Casa Parrillada aka Gauchos

Swiss and Argentinian

This isn’t new. I’ve been here many times. It’s our usual post-football haunt.

Casa Parrillada is a chain, it was known
as Gauchos before I arrived

The go-to order is a beer and something called a Punta Jalapeño, a baby-sized steak with a piece of bread and a garlic-onion broth. Lovely and less than $5 for both.

Punta and Pilsener = happiness

This time, being the final football of the year, we did something different. Firstly, the game itself. Our usual recent pitch doesn’t like people playing when it rains, even though it is all-weather astroturf. It is rainy season, meaning they cancel a lot. Eight of us decided that we were desperate to play and went to our school, where the pitch…needs a bit of TLC. We made it fun by using these…

Only scoring in the small goals counts!

But you’re here to read about food! We also went different on our order, going Swiss by ordering fondue. Two of them, actually. Probably not Swiss cheese, but delicious nonetheless.

You can get fondue with different ingredients
included, such as mushrooms or chorizo

While eating this, we saw another table order something called a ‘churrasco argentino’. It looked nice, it was the last week, we’d run around a bit. A small strip steak, thinner than a punta, combined with a thick chorizo sausage. I don’t eat meat when cooking at home, so at this point I felt like I’d had a month’s supply in 24 hours. Worth every bit.

#carnivore

Wednesday

El Chamo
Venezuelan

I’m too old and lazy to go out every night these days. Still, I was feeling too lazy to cook. The solution: takeaway!

I know none of the other foods in this picture!

One food I’ve heard quite a bit about since heading west is Venezuelan, specifically something called an arepa. Heard about, never seen…until ordering two on Wednesday. 

Shredded beef and chicken/avocado respectively

A maize flatbread which is split into two and cooked (these were fried) before being stuffed with a filling, it made me think of it as an overloaded sandwich. For $6 a pop, I thought they could have been bigger. I wonder if I can find a cheaper arepa stand somewhere in San Salvador, rather than ordering from a restaurant, in the future.

Thursday

Unapenda Chakula

Ugandan

The only African restaurant in El Salvador. That’s how it’s advertised, anyway. I spent my 

afternoon on the other side of town, braving a tremendous storm in the process, to be in the right area to get to Unapenda Chakula. It closes early, often at 6pm, so I needed to be in the neighbourhood before traffic got too intense.

An unlikely combination!

I arrived at what looked like a mini food court, which also had a taco shop and Chinese takeaway. I met the owner, Benjamin, and got talking. He likes to chat as he cooks.

I forgot to ask the meaning of this but have found
that 'chakula' translates as food or meal in Swahili

It was fascinating to find that the Ugandan owner was actually born in El Salvador, spent his childhood back in Uganda and then worked over here as a university professor for many years before starting his restaurant. He doesn’t want to work late, hence the early opening hours. Lovely man with a big heart. Interestingly, he doesn't like cooking with eggs, so the one Ugandan dish I knew of is a bit different. The Rolex - ‘rolled eggs’ - doesn’t have eggs.

The rolex here has meat and vegetables instead of eggs

I didn’t have that, instead trying his recommendation of ‘kikakayi’. This was pork rinds cooked in a stew of vegetables and chillies, served with chapatis. It reminded me of ‘chakalaka’ which was a common option in the southern African countries I have visited. I would order something else next time, but it was a very enjoyable evening spent with a passionate and funny man.

Kikayaki

Friday

It was the last day of the school year, which was followed by these:

School's out for summer!

Saturday

Bocadillos Taiwaneses

Taiwanese

Randomly, I had already seen and sampled steamed Taiwanese buns in a different part of El Salvador. Within the capital, however, there is a restaurant whose name translates from Spanish as ‘Taiwanese sandwiches’.

Not exactly hopping at 4pm on a Saturday

These were disappointing, mainly because there was hardly any filling inside the 4 steamed buns which I ordered.

Apparently there is pork in there...somewhere...

The bubble tea was slightly better, but I felt that everything about this place could have been better. 

Bubble tea with tapioca

I like trying these different places and finding out about new cuisines. From my gastronomic adventure across San Salvador over the past week, I certainly will be going back to get my fill of Cuban in the future!

Many more pupusas to have as well!

Love you all,

Matt

El Salvador - Stairway to the Sky

Hello everyone!

May 19-21

Running is a big thing in El Salvador, with events and races happening most weekends. One I had spied for a while was a trail run in the north of the country, in a town called Ataco.

Not a Stairway to Heaven!

Ataco in Google Translate is 'attack',
making this the 'Ultra Attack' race...

Sitting towards the northern end of the Ruta de las Flores (Flower Route), Ataco is a lovely spot which I have visited once before. Ultrataco, as the run is called, takes in the cobbled streets of its town centre before sending a runner out into the lush, green surroundings. 

A bit longer than two hours in Friday afternoon traffic

Bougainvillea on the run

Sounds alright so far, doesn’t it? A nice weekend away in a slightly cooler climate (Ataco is about 300 metres higher in altitude than Santa Tecla) and an exploratory run. 

View from our lovely AirBnB - thankfully, we
didn't have to run in those mountains

Ataco seems to have adopted cats as their logo...and
Ataco has 'cat' written backwards in its name!

This possibly explains the relative lack of training I did in the weeks leading up to Ultrataco. I was running a 15 kilometre route, and I know I can do that. Hannah and I actually did a half-marathon in the city at the end of March. 

Most of this half-marathon was on the hard shoulder of a main road

The race was called 'Carrera de los Heroes',
which raised awareness of and funds to fight child cancer

This run was going to be different, though. It’s a trail run. Mostly off-road, undulating, and cutting across terrain you wouldn’t usually see if you visited Ataco.

Easy to roll your ankle when running on this 

Views to west gave sights of the 'Impossible' national park

We had picked the 15 km option, rather than something ridiculous like the 33 km or 55 (!) km runs. Other friends were coming up to either do the 15 km or 6 km run. As the run was on Sunday, we spent Saturday not really moving much aside from walking the dogs.

I bought this shirt, which I had seen in October and
had non-buyer's remorse about ever since

The dogs couldn't solve a Sherlock Holmes mystery
with the rest of us, so contented themselves with dozing

Pizza is always a good carb-loading, delicious choice

Our run was to start at 6:30am. The temperature wasn’t too hot at this point, though I was already feeling sympathy for the 55 km runners who had only started at 5am. They would be finishing in the middle of the day in very hot conditions.

The six of us before starting our runs

The only ambition I had for this was to finish and enjoy the route. It started nicely, with a gentle upward slope on the cobbled streets taking us south through the town. Lots of people were running this distance, meaning it was quite cramped at the start.

The starting point - it did start on time!

Bottleneck

The number of people thinned out as the route started going uphill as we left the town. Already some people were walking, which was going to result in their race taking quite a long time. Running alongside coffee fields and through farms took us into beautiful, peaceful hills.

The road out of Ataco

A wide variety of colourful foliage brightened parts of the route

The mention of hills is pointed. I knew that the distance was 15 km…and also knew that there was a significant amount of climbing that would happen during that time. Over 600 metres, to be precise. I had also been warned specifically about the second severe incline, known as ‘Escalera al Cielo’: ladder to the sky.

The bottom section shows you the three
main inclines that needed to be passed

Escalera al Cielo

Hill one on that chart above was the side of a valley which we first had to get down. That part was interesting enough, needing to use a rope to parlay your way down a very steep, dusty hill before skipping over a stream. The man before me - sorry, the man who had pushed his way in front of me, almost knocking me over - half-slid down using the rope, meaning that it moved away from me when I stretched to grab it. I just about managed to cling on in order to slide down.

This could have been fatal if it had been raining

You can just about see the rope - I couldn't get a better
picture as I would have been wiped out by other runners coming down!

The incline on the other side? Steep. I part-ran, part-walked. It felt like my walking was faster than my running at one point, particularly when it got to a more open section of the hill which was exposed to the ever-strengthening Sun.

The start of the first hill

Running between the first two major inclines

A little bit more up-and-down took me to the sign below. At this point my legs were already burning, so I was very thankful to be turning right. Until I saw the slope. The start of Escalera al Cielo. A 700 metre path which has a vertical rise of 137 metres. An almost 20% gradient.

I'm sure the 55 km runners had plenty of other challenges to tackle

Ready to reach for the sky!

I’d told a friend that I would run up the whole thing so I started…and quickly stopped. I think I ran for ten metres, then had to walk. Even walking up was tremendously difficult. It speaks volumes that there was a busy refuelling point at the top, where I spent some time eating and drinking whilst mentally preparing to go on. Mind over matter at this point, my legs were jelly.

No one else I saw ran this part

Watermelon and a banana dipped in salt have never tasted so good

That quickly changed as the route - still lovely with incredible views - slalomed mostly down from this point. I was taken by surprise when I rounded a corner and saw a cobbled street leading into the town. Two short streets later and I was finished.

By this point I had switched to using a bandana to
stop sweat dripping from my hair into my eyes

This section included the 'third hill',
which I was able to run most of

All of our group finished reasonably close to one another. After grabbing a quick shower and making sure the dogs hadn’t destroyed anything, we returned to see the award ceremony. Unsurprisingly, none of the 55 km participants had finished. The winning time in my run was about 1 hour 18 minutes. Insane. I liked the trophies, which were a heavy wooden cat.

They wouldn't have wanted to run

Our friend Stephane came third in his category.
For a while, they said he was first...until
they realised he wasn't a female...

It was a lovely weekend away with great people, and one which we’re tempted to repeat when Ultrataco happens next year. Maybe I’ll be able to run up more than ten metres of the ladder to the sky that time…

The speed at which some people were
hurtling down slopes was quite scary

I don't know what happened to my face in this picture!

Faster than I thought I would be

Love you all,

Matt