The ultimate in Central American comfort food starts with corn dough and stuffs it with anything from refried beans to an edible bloom known as “loroco” to a cheese-and-fried-pork mixture known as “revuelto.”
These are pupusas, flatbread with various fillings that are so popular in El Salvador they have become the country’s national dish with a special day to honor them. The second Sunday in November is set aside to officially celebrate pupusas.
Pupusa dough is rolled and patted in the cook’s hands before landing on the griddle, where its outer crust picks up the classic dark, spotty sears. It’s typically topped with a pickled cabbage slaw called “curtido” and covered with a red tomato salsa.
Pupusas are not readily available in Columbia, but they can be found in Marshall at La Paz Grocery and Restaurant and in Sedalia at Pupuseria Jireh.
Although it’s difficult to pinpoint the exact origin of the pupusa, the dish is attributed to the Pipil indigenous people of Central America, said Helen Burgos-Ellis, a lecturer at the UCLA Cesar E. Chavez Department of Chicana/o and Central American Studies.
She said pupusas are emblematic of how much care goes into Salvadoran food.
“It’s the basics,” she said, “like beans in a household.”
Here are two towns close to Columbia that serve the dish.
La Paz Grocery and Restaurant
345 N Jefferson Ave., Marshall
Open 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday; 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday; 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sunday.
Call 660-831-1211
Marshall, about an hour northwest of Columbia in Saline County, is known for its small but thriving Salvadoran population. It’s no wonder that La Paz Grocery and Restaurant at 345 N. Jefferson Ave serves authentic Salvadoran food, including pupusas.
Owners Ana Deisi Garcia and Rosa Delmi Figueroa are sisters who fled to Los Angeles from the violence of El Salvador in the early 1990s.
“It was really ugly,” Garcia said about living through the Salvadoran Civil War.
Meat-trimming work pulled the sisters to Kansas, and they eventually settled in Marshall, where they continued working in the food-packing industry. In 2006, the sisters heard La Paz was for sale and the owner wanted to pass the establishment on to fellow Salvadorans.
“And here we are,” said Figueroa, who’s been cooking since age 7. “It’s a dream come true.”
The restaurant, which is staffed by Guatemalans as well as Salvadorans, serves an array of Salvadoran and Mexican plates plus all-day Salvadoran breakfast. But pupusas are the main attraction.
“We come here at least once a month,” said Marshall locals Shelby Dawson and Andrew Vogel, a newly engaged couple.
“The pupusas are really something,” Dawson said.
Customers come from all over, including Columbia, Garcia said. She also emphasized that freshness is essential.
“If a customer complains that the pupusas are taking too long, we explain, ‘Pupusas are made in the moment,’” she said.
La Paz also sells Latin American goods in its grocery store, including breads, fruits and vegetables essential to Central American cuisine.
The sisters have expanded the original market and restaurant at the intersection of Boyd Street and Jefferson Avenue — which holds a small kitchen and seats for diners — to a second building with a larger dining room, kitchen and bar just a few steps west of the street corner. A covered outdoor dining area sits between the buildings.
It’s a party on weekends, with live singing, drinks and the sounds of Latin America: merengue, reggaeton and cumbia.
After struggling during their first year in business, the owners say the journey has been worth it.
“To be able to employ people, to be able to serve people who like your food — it’s a beautiful thing,” Figueroa said.
Pupuseria Jireh
2409 W. Broadway, Sedalia
660-287-9949
About an hour southwest of Columbia, Sedalia is best known for the Missouri State Fair, but when fried Twinkies aren’t in season, look for pupusas.
Omar and Mildree Castellano, a couple who met while working at Tyson Foods, have been serving the Salvadoran staple at the Pupuseria Jireh food truck since December 2020.
Mexican-born and Texas-raised Omar helps prepare the curtido and serve customers in the corner of the El Amigo used tire shop on Sedalia’s bustling Broadway Boulevard. Mildree, who immigrated from El Paraiso, El Salvador, crafts the pupusas.
“I bring the seasoning,” said Mildree, who is adept with the dough in her hands.
Mildree inherited her kitchen skills from her mother and honed them with her sister.
“She introduced me to pupusas,” Omar said about his wife. “Because there aren’t any other pupusa spots in Sedalia, it’s been wonderful to share some of her country and her authentic food with other people.”
A wider variety of Salvadoran dishes are coming to Pupuseria Jireh soon, according to the Castellanos.
They are in the process of turning the vacant space that sits behind the truck and next to the tire shop into Pupuseria Jireh’s brick-and-mortar location. Although they will continue to use the truck as a kitchen, the new restaurant will allow customers to eat indoors.
To Omar, it will be a space where customers can come for comfort, smiles and familiarity. That feeling is what Pupuseria Jireh has provided to regular customer David Arzudia, who moved to Sedalia in 2017 from Los Angeles, a city teeming with pupuserias and other Central American eats.
“I’m over here all the time,” Arzudia said. “It brings me back home.”
The business is a blessing they credit in the name: Jireh comes from the biblical Jehova Jireh, Hebrew for “Jehova provides.”
“Sometimes dreams seem impossible,” Mildree said. “But little by little, they come along.”