By Jim Duncan CVFDude@aol.com

El Salvador del Mundo

Many Central American cafès in Des Moines have closed less than a year after opening - although many reached out to a larger customer base with Mexican dishes. Keeping a purer regional faith, El Salvador del Mundo might be the local savior of its entire culinary genre. The humble, if not humbly named, restaurant occupies space recently inhabited by failed soul food, Honduran and Vietnamese cafès, but business was healthy on all of our recent visits. Owner Carlos de Luna and family work very hard at delivering pure Salvadoran cuisine. That means everything except the pastries and flan (from Raquel's Bakery) is made from scratch, in this Mom & Pop (and Aunt & Kid's) kitchen.
The pupusa is the hamburger of El Salvador, the dish that best represents the national culture. Fairs and farmers' markets familiarized many Iowans with them, but ESdM's will convert new believers because they are made, like all their corn-derived dishes, with masa - lime-soaked corn paste. Most places take maseca short cuts. The difference is like that between scratch baking and using instant-cake mixes.

Like french fries, pupusas need to be eaten fresh off the griddle, while their outside is still hot and fluffy and the filling is molten. On all occasions, ours were served immediately, so it was possible to balance their richness with fresh-made salsa rojo (milder than Mexican salsas) and with "curtido," a vinegary slaw of cabbage, carrots and onions.

Stuffings really distinguish ESdM's pupusas. You can order chicharron, cheese, loroco, beans and any combination of these. Around Iowa, chicharron is usually thought of as the crispy pork rinds that look like potato chips on steroids, or the goey hunks of skin served in Mexican stews. Salvadoran chicharron has more meat on the skin than Tex Mex. The de Leon's homemade version comes from a complicated process that other restaurants farm out - pork skins are steamed, then deep-fried, producing chunks that range between bacon and jerky in texture. Some are then run through a meat grinder for pupusa stuffing smooth enough to melt on the tongue. Salvadoran white cheese is similar to Oaxacan. Loroco is a flower that tastes a bit like artichokes. All beans here are made from a small red bean with white eyes, very similar to adzukis. They have more body than Mexican pintos; we suspect a bit of lard helps.

Tamales are also distinctively regional. Unlike most Mexican tamales, these are steamed in banana leaves. Unlike most banana-leaf tamales, these are not runny. The de Leons accomplish this by baking or frying the unwrapped tamales before serving them. We preferred them fried and served with beans and Salvadoran sour cream. We also tried peppers stuffed with meat and fried in a whole egg meringue, plus "pacayas" (squid-like roots of bamboo) also stuffed expertly ("Only Mom knows how") with meat.

Soups are a national specialty, and the heartiest meals. A bone-broth chicken soup came with a large deep-fried thigh on the side. "Specialty of the house" cow's-foot soup was consistently sold out. Sides of yucca, presented beautifully with sprinkled anchovies, tomatoes and chicharron delighted, as did caramelized plantains served as breakfast, dinner and dessert. Fresh-made tortillas were the thickest in town.

Horchata was not as sweet as Mexican versions of that soft drink. "Chilates con nuegedos" was a take on Mexican "atole," with sweet yucca and plantain added to the corn drink. Homemade "empanadas," filled with mushed bananas, behaved like escapees from the holes of Krispy Kreme donuts. CV

El Salvador del Mundo
2901 Sixth Ave. (Parking lot in back)
Daily (except Weds.) 9:30 - 9:30, later on weekends

Food News

Jon Benedict at the 25th Street Cafè introduced his new summer menu. Notice the authentic herb spaetzle pared with smoked Niman Ranch tenderloin, and the boneless grilled escolar.

Trostel's Greenbriar now offers half-price bottles of wine on Mondays and four-course wine parings on Wednesdays ($47).

You can blame obesity for the airlines new charges on all bags weighing more than 50 pounds. Fat Americans now cost USA airlines $275 million a year for the additional fuel needed to carry their extra girth. The extra fuel also released 3.8 million more tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The airlines finally learned it's easier to reduce the weight of baggage than the baggage of overweight humans.

Chef Bill McDaniels at Manhattan's Red Cat has invented a wildly popular new dish that terrifies the nutrition police: bacon tempura. The recipe is so indecent it can only be viewed via e-mail.

To support Des Moines Metro Opera's "Stars of Tomorrow Apprentice Artist and Orchestral Concert," owner-chef Jeremy Morrow of 43 will prepare a gala Chef's Table dinner and wine paring June 4 at the Finkbine Mansion. Donations of $250 per person will include tickets to the dinner and the concert in July. Call: 515-961-6221.

Food Fact

Chocolate is so chemically complex it has resisted synthetic duplication. It's also too complex for many writers, who have deceived people with false reports about "healthy" properties of dark chocolate. Here are some hard facts: 1.) Since discovering that raw cocoa drinkers resisted some cardiovascular diseases, Mars Inc. has been secretly working for 12 years to develop a new process (Cocoapro [R]) that doesn't destroy the all-important flavonols and antioxidants in raw cocoa beans; 2.) Though commercial dark chocolate technically has more flavonols than milk chocolate, neither has enough to matter in reducing heart risks; 3.) Millions of research dollars later, Mars recently came out with Cocoavia, a snack bar made with a combination of high-flavonol cocoa and plant sterols from soy (also believed to lower cholesterol); 4.) No other commercial chocolate has any science behind its health claims, and Cocoavia is not faring well in taste tests.

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