Tuesday, May 4. Pupuseria La Macarena. I hate to say this, but it's true: most of the restaurant touts I hear from my radio listeners do not pan out. I bear them no ill will. The show attracts people just discovering the excitement of the city's dining community. They naturally gravitate to the most accessible places. I did this myself. My parents never went to restaurants, and it wasn't until I had my own money that I began to learn what was out there. I started with hamburgers, and it's a long upward climb from there.
Despite my suspicions of listener recommendations, I usually take them anyway. You never know. A few days ago someone called with raves about the Riverbend location of Pupuseria La Macarena. The original is in Kenner, but this one is in that right little restaurant row on Hampson Street and Carrollton that includes One, Refuel, Hana Sushi, O'Henry's, the Camellia Grill, and Jazmine.
It looked nice enough, and so were the people. If they're not all related to one another, the act as if they are. Mama was in the back cooking. A young man and a young woman tended the tables with enthusiasm and polish not often seen in restaurants this ethnically specialized. He told me that they didn't have a liquor license, but that he'd serve a glass of a homemade concoction made of the juice of--was it blackberries? Whatever it was, it was tasty and palate-perking, and I think there may have been a little alcohol in there, although I'm not certain. (That's legal, as long as they give it away.)
Indeed, the waiter came over and joyfully enumerated a number of specials. I went half with his advice. My idea was to start with the equivalent of Italian bruschetta: slices of French bread topped with chorizo, tomatoes, a lightly cheesy sauce, cilantro and olives. The waiter insisted on adding to this trio another, this one made with a slice of beef tenderloin. All were good, and even without the freebie this was enough to split two ways.
The entree was a striking pupusa platter. In most Central American restaurants, the food is more or less thrown onto the plate. This had the attention to detail given by a gourmet bistro. Two pupusas stuffed with pork, cheese, and onions were on the left. An enormous tamal, wrapped with a shiny banana leaf, was in the center. Some fried plantains were on the right. And along the back were four condiments, ranging from a crema salsa to pureed black beans to a peppery red-orange sauce. And some chopped cabbage for good measure. Every bit of this was delicious.
Throughout the meal, by coincidence, I read an article in The New Yorker about Jonathan Gold. He's a restaurant critic whose career has been mostly in Los Angeles, but who went to New York a few years ago to write for Gourmet. He is the only restaurant critic to my knowledge to win a Pulitzer Prize for his food writing. Gold is famous in food-fanatic circles for his passion for the most ethnically diverse cuisines, even if sampling them requires his going to restaurants in rough parts of town. And even if the hygiene of the place is dubious. He says he gets food poisoning several times a year, but that the places with low health-inspection grades have some of the most authentic food.
I'm glad he's covering that end of the spectrum. My feeling about the low end of the restaurant world was summed up by Richard Collin in one of his books. About some dive in a tertiary neighborhood he said, "The poor eat poorly." That is unfortunate, of course, and there are some exceptions here and there, but it's generally true. I think La Macarena's Salvadoran food is clearly better than what I've had in El Salvador or Guatemala. The ideas and the ingredients are the same, but because La Macarena can charge more than its Central American counterparts, it can buy better food and cook and serve it better.
To give a comparison, what car would you prefer to drive? A brand-new Audi (that's an admitted plug for one of my radio sponsors) or a twenty-year-old Audi with 367,503 miles, a failing engine and bad brakes? They come from the same factory, and are equally "authentic." But there's more pleasure to be had from the new one.
The equalizer, of course, is one's taste for adventure. I've come close to death enough times (five) to have lost any desire I ever had to tempt the reaper. Or even the stomach pump. I guess that makes me a wimp.
Back to La Macarena: it shares with many other newer Hispanic restaurants the maddening practice of not accepting credit cards. Instead, they have an ATM machine in the dining room. The menu makes a long explanation of how they're a little family business, and four percent payment to the bank for handling cards is too burdensome for them. They'd prefer spending the money serving their customers better. Oh, yeah? Well, using their ATM machine cost me five percent. And my own one-man business takes credit cards at five and a half percent. There's another explanation, of course. The restaurant, good as it was, had few other diners in the room. Don't they know that cash-only policies keep potential diners away? If they don't, they do now.
I don't like the cash-only policies at Mandina's, Casamento's, and Mosca's, either.
Pupuseria La Macarena. Riverbend: 8120 Hampson. 504-861-4449. Central American.
