I had high hopes for Salvadoran restaurants, with their unusual fruit juices and inexpensive pupusas, thinly stuffed corn tortillas filled with cheese and pork and beans, which, if you eat plain (instead of with the vinegary cabbage slaw) seemed pretty blandly kid-friendly. I was confident enough, in fact, that I dragged the whole family, including Leo’s 4-year-old brother Grady, to Irene's Pupusas 3, a Salvadoran restaurant close to where they live in Silver Spring, Md., and just two blocks from the Wheaton Metro stop.
Leo and Grady both liked pupusas, although they were less positive about the tamale, which Grady tasted and then declared, enigmatically, “It doesn’t sound so good.” Bigger hits were the sweet fried plantains served with thick sour cream and beans, and the juices. Grady took to the passion fruit juice, but Leo showed excellent taste by favoring the jugo de marañón, or cashew fruit. “I love this one,” he said, slurping away. That warmed my heart since when I spent a summer in El Salvador, I, too, fell in love with jugo de marañón. (And with a Salvadoran woman, too, but that didn’t last. Cashew fruit is forever.)
from "Cheap, kid-friendly eats in Washington, D.C." by Seth Kugel
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