Description
More than 30 years since it opened, this Bernal Heights restaurant is still one of the city's best Salvadoran restaurants. The ceiling sparkles with a thousand icicle lights, and the room often reverberates with cumbia from the jukebox or guitar-hoisting musicians. La Santaneca's pupusas -- griddle-cooked corn or rice cakes stuffed with cheese, beans, or pork -- are good, the curtido (spicy pickled cabbage) particularly piquant. The yuca with chicharron is fried to a golden crackle, and the banana-wrapped tamales de chipilin approach the lightness of a meringue. Drinks at the Central American restaurant range from toasted-seed horchata to tiste, a Frappuccino-like blend of roasted corn and cacao beans.
