The Silver Spring Penguin

Photo: Pupusas con mucho queso. Credit: J. Deseo/SSP.

As a native New Yorker, I’m an immense fan of street food, that breed of cuisine that’s too pedestrian for fine dining, yet too delectable to leave on the curb. Whether it’s a dirty-water dog or an oversalted pretzel, street food binds the cerebral, sometimes pretentious sensation that is taste with the carnal, always gratifying experience of consumption.

So it was with a good bit of squealing glee that I greeted the new Pupuseria El Oasis on Georgia Avenue. Sure, there are plenty of places in Wheaton that pay homage to the El Salvadoran stuffed flatbread. They even appear on the menus of some of downtown’s “Mexican” restaurants.

But Pupuseria El Oasis has a tough role to fill, as it straddles the culinary divide between old and new downtown Silver Spring. A few doors to its north are the nouvelle cuisine of Nicaro and a casual but tidy Olazzo. Just south of the pupuseria is Tijuana’s, a Tex-Mex dive that sticks true to its namesake.

Can street food like the pupusa bridge so wide a gap? That depends on what’s ordered, and whether one carries enough cash to aquire it.

At first glance, Pupuseria El Oasis’s menu seems varied enough to handle the task. A less adventurous diner might order the steak platter ($10), a segmented Styrofoam plate piled with rice and refried beans, then topped with a thin slice of grilled beef. The steak is soft enough to yield to a plastic knife, but it doesn’t offer much flavor. Its rice bed looks and feels fluffy enough, but bears an overwhelming taste of salty chicken broth. At least the refried beans mask it in a dense paste.

The platter arrives with a side salad of coursely chopped iceburg lettuce and tomato slices, served with no dressing or seasoning. There’s also some pico de gallo — chopped tomatoes and onions with just a trickle of fresh cilantro. Skip it — all of it.

Photo: Ground beans, fried eggs and plantains for breakfast. Credit: R. Pace/SSP

Even worse is the breakfast platter of hand-ground beans, fried eggs and fried plantains ($7, right). The runny, nearly liquified pinto beans have a peculiar fatty taste (pork fat rendered beyond rendering) that doesn’t work at all. Fried eggs are fried eggs, and the plantains are dense and starchy, not soft and sweet as they would be if allowed to ripen. Again, skip it.

But what about the damned pupusas (above)? The restaurant finds some redemption there.

Each corn-flour pupusa is about five inches in diameter, stuffed with ooey, gooey Salvadoran cheese, then grilled until slightly crisp on the edges. It’s terrific for fans of grilled cheese sandwiches, and at $1.50 per pop, the price can’t be beat. Adding refried beans to the stuffing makes the pupusa a hearty, filling meal. Throw in a little loroco edible flower bud, and experience a slightly sweet version of broccoli. It’s prettty good.

But to experience these flatbread delights, one should carry cash. During one visit to taste test more of the menu’s pupusas (pork and cheese, and squash and cheese), the cashier first said my receipt didn’t meet the restaurant’s minimum $7 purchase for credit card transactions.

After ordering a few more pupusas, my tab totalled $10. (At $1.50 per pupusa, that adds up to a lot of food.) The cashier then said the restaurant’s credit-card reader was out of paper, and that the transaction couldn’t be completed. With nothing in my pocket other than a useless plastic card and lint, I left the pupuseria hungry.

This restaurant has a lot of work ahead of it. Its overpriced platters aren’t going to drive customers into the dark, barren space. And its big draw — the pupusas — won’t pay the rent. Instead, its management must decide whether to straighten up its act and serve more appetizing platters, or to focus on expanding its selection of pupusas and survive on volume sales.

I vote for the latter — if empanada stands can survive on sales of the “Elvis” peanut butter and banana empanada, then a pupuseria can do the same.

Pupuseria El Oasis, 8223 Georgia Ave, Silver Spring, (301) 495-0219.