There are few sights that compare with a really lovely woman wearing a big smile on a face that is shiny from the juices of a just sucked pupusa. It’s a shame that so many people are just too uptight to allow themselves to put a hot pupusa into their mouth, bite down on it a little and experience that hot steaming pupusa love juice explode into their mouth. Most conservative Christians, Muslims and Jews would never think of ever putting anyone’s pupusa into their mouth. But face it. God doesn’t want them to enjoy the pleasure and passion of a mouth full of hot pupusa. They live in fear of dying with a mouth full of someone’s pupusa and showing up before Saint Peter with that hot pupusa juice drooling down their chin.

That hot pupusa smell! Who can resist it? It produces instant arousal, like a picture of a very young girl. Regardless of one’s sexual orientation, it is impossible for anyone not to want to get a mouth full of hot pupusa once that aroma wafts. Pupusa has sexual significance for men as well as for women.  A real man will do anything to sink his face into a hot and juicy pupusa. A real man does not care that Saint Peter may be able to tell that his death was associated with a mouth full of hot, juicy pupusa. A real man would prominently display on his professional resume that his face often reveals that he has just eaten pupusa. A real man can provide testimonials about how competent he is at eating pupusa. All women love a man who is good at eating pupusa.

And afterward, all you want to do is take a nap. That’s why pupusa is better than a real woman. When you’re done with a pupusa, it’s ok to take a nap. A pupusa won’t be offended if you doze. You don’t have to reassure a pupusa that the experience you just had with it was superb. It already knows that and is happy if you lapse into sleep. You also don’t have to buy a pupusa expensive presents or make promises to a pupusa that you know you will never keep. You don’t have to marry a pupusa or worry about making it pregnant. A pupusa never gets old. When you are done with a pupusa, it is done with you. You don’t have to call or send it flowers.

There is no such thing as counterfeit pupusa, though many are trying. The latest fiasco is the Taco Cabana pseudo pupusa, a mayonnaise Mexican concoction designed to titillate the palate of a Presbyterian yuppie. Taco Cabana management obviously thinks that because God made a vagina look like a taco (which is obviously why people will eat a taco), they can pass off some ersatz club sandwich greasy ass griddled cheese whiz bullshit as a pupusa. FORGETABOUTIT!!

This is Houston. We know what real pupusa tastes like. Eating that phony Taco Cabana crap is the gastronomic equivalent of wanking as you mope along in rush hour traffic.

For many years I have been unable to convince any Anglo date to put a pupusa into her mouth or allow pupusa in her tummy. The very word pupusa is so erotic, so unbelievably sexual that they think that going to a place called El Pupusadromo is where they would be expected to enter a contest to show which woman could put the biggest pupusa into her mouth and hold it there until hot juice squirted down her throat. To them it sounds somewhat beneath what a “good girl” was told by her mother could be done without ruining her reputation. How could she go to work on Monday and tell her friends that she had spent an evening in a Pupusadromo (sounds like a pupusadrome where pupusa swallowing contests might take place while guys bet on which gal could swallow the most pupusa).  How could they even think of having to confess to some priest that they had put pupusa into their mouth?  The question “How many pupusas have you eaten” sounds like a direct attack on their character.  They fear being known around town as a pupusa slut. Who would ever want to marry a girl who had frequently eaten pupusas with men? They have nightmares that guys are writing their names and telephone numbers on men’s room walls with inscriptions about what great pupusa dates they are – “For great pupusa, call Mary Beth”.

Much to the amazement of most of you, pupusas really are food. Pupusas are exquisitely Salvadoran, and anything else is bullshit. The trinity of pupusa heaven consists of Loroco (cheese and flowers – strong smell), Chicharron (pork – yum) and Revuelta (cheese and pork). They can be made from/with wheat, corn or rice and can have beans as well. They are accompanied by pickled shredded vegetables (curtido) and sauce. Here in Houston, we have a sizable Salvadoran community and authentic pupusas, including a small chain, El Pupusadromo. It could be that the next big franchise offering will be a Pupusadromo opportunity. It will be a great windfall for bankruptcy attorneys. You cannot Americanize pupusas. The pupusa is the ultimate definition of a specific food preparation. It is not a gordita, a chalupa or an empanada. It is not a taco, a burrito or an enchilada. This week’s Houston Chronicle Dining Guide contains an exquisite tour of pupusadom.   It is not Mexican, Cuban, Jewish, Italian, Polish or Greek. It is the Salvadoran pupusa.

My good friend Dave Wilson doesn’t like pupusas because he claims they don’t have enough lard to be really greasy-juicy, and you have to get your pupusa juice from the sauce and the pickled veggies that are served with it.  Dave would much prefer a drippingly wet/greasy gordita – also one of my very favorite foods. Dave also reminds me that only a real macho man would ever take a woman out for pupusas. No woman, so he says, will ever put out for pupusas, as they might, for instance at a grande luxe dinner at some swanky venue. If you get laid after a pupusa dinner, it’s because you are simply irresistible as a lover. So if you really want to see whether you have what it takes just as a matter of raw sex appeal, take your next date to a pupuseria. Dave has lived in El Salvador and knows whereof he speaks. He says the real treat is to go back in the kitchen and watch a real Salvadoran woman make a pupusa.  After they press the cheese or whatever into the dough/masa and cover it with a dough fold over before adding other ingredients, they slap the pupusa back and forth from hand to hand to form and shape it. Face it, some women slap pupusas in more erotic ways than others. Dave says that a real Salvadoran woman slapping a pupusa gives him a great erection.  He also said that I should not allow facts to get in the way of telling this story any way I want.

People sometimes don’t believe me when I tell them that Houston is the most international city for gastronomes on the planet. We have a wonderful Salvadoran community here who work hard, take care of their families and make a great social contribution to our community and society. The Salvadorans here have reason to be very proud of who they are and of their wonderful culture. The Salvadoran neighborhoods are just a few minutes from here, and I can eat and shop in San Salvador in about 15 minutes by car. The pupusa is practically their national food. 

To be sure, the genre is not unique to El Salvador. Flatbreads and stuffed flatbreads abound in many cultures, from the Mexican tortilla to the Middle Eastern pita and oiled souvlaki pita and pitas already impregnated with herbs and nuts and other exotic flavorings, to the Indian naan and keema naan, and so on and so forth. But those are altogether beyond the scope of this commentary. Culturally, flat breads are found where there are no eating utensils and the social regimen calls upon people not to simply stick their often filthy hands into a communal bowl of food. Pieces of the flatbread are broken off and used to grab or scoop food.  Amongst  Arabs and Bedu, for example, taking food with one’s left hand is taboo, as it is the left hand that is used to clean one’s bum after a bowel movement. One should regard any culture that does not recognize tableware and toilet paper as a socially retarded group. I suspect that it is in parts of the world where water is scarce and there is little forestation and people cook with dried animal dung for fuel.

If you were to do a search on Google using the word pupusa, you would find that there are pupuserias in most major cities. You can even get a pupusa in Boston, home of the bean and the scrod, where Lowells speak only to Cabots and Cabots speak only to God. I doubt that anyone would go all the way to Boston for pupusa, but here in Texas, people have been known to drive from Austin to Houston just to shove their faces into pupusas, or to shove pupusas into their faces.

My personal tastes run more to the greasy gordita, just like my pal Dave Wilson. The pupusa is more of an occasional excursion into the exotic. When I come home from eating gordita, the cats are all over me, as they just love and go wild for a shirt that has been decorated with gordita drippings. You cannot eat a real gordita without getting it on your shirt. Oh, I suppose there may be someone out there who can pull that off without the telltale stain, but I don’t know that person and don’t want to know that person. Gorditas should be eaten while wearing a wife beater shirt.  Fortunately for me, I can metabolize a pick up truck, so what I eat is not a matter of concern. Sometimes, when I have a real nightmare, I am being persecuted by all those health compromised people who have been forced to watch me eat. Before I gave up on the dry martini, the dream was populated with all the people who used to go on pub crawls with me who are no longer amongst the living. Was it really my fault that they couldn’t resist that excitement? Was I to blame – as their wives seem to believe – that they would rather have drunk themselves to death with me than go home and spend time with their families? I’m amazed I have not been sued by the widows and children of my former drinking mates. Hopefully the statute of limitations has by now run out on all those claims.

I agree with Dave that the curtido, the spiced pickled veggies, are really what makes the pupusa work. But pickled veggies abound in most cultures. Germans have sauerkraut; Koreans have kimchee and many other assorted pickled veggie accoutrements; Japanese have assorted pickled veggies including several varieties of pickled ginger; Indians have their pickles and chutneys – and so on and so forth, ad nauseam. In south Texas we have rajas – YUM!

But pupusas will probably delight yuppies for numerous reasons – all too disgusting to mention. In reality, I wrote this story because the word pupusa has such double entendre potential. You can conjure with the word pupusa and come up with the most disgusting/delightful pornographic descriptions.  BUT! Try them your own self and make your own decision.