Deep Dive Local: Grand Central Market's Sarita's Pupuseria

If you’re one of the few people in LA who hasn’t had a pupusa, what is it exactly?

A thick cushiony pancake made from corn or rice flour and stuffed with all kinds of creative deliciousness is one way to describe it or, if you’re like us, you can turn to Jonathan Gold’s immortal words: “consider the pupusa: a dense, griddle-baked corn thing filled with goodies, a UFO-shaped Salvadoran snack that is something like a shotgun wedding between a tortilla and an Italian calzone.”

Either way, it’s delicious, a pinata of fluffy corn or rice hiding oozy cheese and surprises like shrimp, chorizo, cactus, asada, and topped with cortido, a crunchy slaw, and sometimes too with loroco, made from the slightly-briny green flowers of a vine.

And where is it best experienced in the wild?

Sarita’s Pupuseria at the historic Grand Central Market Downtown.

Paul Serrano, Sara Clark and Paul Serrano, Jr , photo by Jakob Layman

Sara Clark’s pupusas are among the best in the city. The stall she runs with her family—Paul Serrano Sr, herself and Paul Serrano Jr—is so iconic that it even got its own cameo in La La Land—which, to translate, means that Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling twirled on these very bar stools. We sat down with manager Paul Serrano Jr, for the skinny on those plump little griddle cakes stuffed with melt-y cheese.

“My mom came to the market,” Paul said. “And she looked around and said, ‘there’s no food from my country. Why not?”

Sara fixed that with her El Salavadoran pupuseria, and now her family stall has been making hungry people happy for twenty-five years.

“It’s been a blessing,” Paul says. “It’s been tough, but it’s been a blessing.”

He tells me a lot of effort has gone into the market with the new management—Adam Daneshgar bought GCM in 2017.

“I’m not going to lie,” he says. “Covid was pretty hard on us. We tried and tried and management helped us out—the market’s always been embracing of us. There were days that were very slow when, like, $80 bucks came in. I stopped paying myself, and so did my mom. We just kept the pay to our employees, because that’s the most important thing, and we pushed through. Now people are getting more comfortable with coming back. It feels like home here. We all know each other. We all help each other.”

And what makes Sarita’s pupusas stand out from the rest?

“We try to get the very best ingredients,” Paul says, with a grin. He tells me about nuestras creaciones pupusas, their creations with shrimp, carne asada, jalapeno and the nopal cactus one that no one had ever done before. “We’re here to serve the community. We’re here to serve LA.”

And his personal fave?

The shrimp, the chorizo, or, wait, the Chicharron Con Frijol, or pork, bean and cheese. “Call next time, and I’ll have it ready,” he says.