- 6/2/2025
Popoca serves some of the best Salvadoran-inspired pupusas and tamales in the Bay Area. The name "Popoca," meaning "to emit smoke," reflects chef Anthony Salguero's signature style of cooking over a wood fire. He grinds all the masa in-house to get the ideal texture needed in traditional Salvadoran cuisine. For the pupusas, he makes a Oaxaca and Monterey Jack blend to achieve the perfect cheese pull, and then stuffs them with fillings like braised beef tongue and mushroom. He then finishes each pupusa over the fire to get the distinct smoky flavor the restaurant is known for.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:01Popoca means to emit smoke.
00:04Smoke is just a way to incorporate so much flavor into food.
00:11We don't make traditional Salvadorian food.
00:14I grew up here, so I'm really like a student of Salvadorian cooking.
00:19Our techniques with wood fire and corn have put us on the map to be one of the best new restaurants in America.
00:25So it's 9 a.m. We're going to start the morning off by grinding some corn that we use for our masa, which is used for like our pupusa or tamales.
00:36This is the one we're going to use for tamales piscas.
00:40In this big pot, we have our blue corn. It's a bolita azul from tamoa, and it's been nixtamalized for about 12 hours.
00:48Nixtamalization helps break down the cellular walls inside the corn.
00:51I personally really like it for our mushroom pupusa.
00:55And as you can see, it's like got like a little bit of white in there and that's what you really want.
01:00Without the nixtamalization process, your corn won't break down and you won't be able to grind it and you just won't be able to eat it.
01:08Opening the Salvadorian-inspired restaurant, I knew pupusas had to be really good here.
01:12I knew I wanted to make fresh masa.
01:14This is our molino. We have these volcanic stones that we're going to put in the molino that's going to grind our corn for us.
01:20This little bar right here is how I choose my grind size.
01:24So I can make it really coarse. I can tighten it to make it really fine.
01:29For the Salvadorian masa, we want a little more water content because we want it to form around a filling.
01:35And you want to be able to do that with your hands. So it just takes like a little bit of a whiter masa.
01:39So I'm going to turn on my little water spout here and then turn on my grinder.
01:47This is like perfect right now. There's like a fine line between too wet and too dry.
01:52It's just got to be like, it has to be perfect or it's really hard to make the pupusa.
01:56We want to incorporate any liquid evenly throughout the whole thing and to season it.
02:02So I'm going to add salt. I think it brings out a little bit of that extra corn flavor.
02:06And that's it. It's like a really nice texture.
02:09Now it's 1130. We're going to move on to braising our linguas.
02:14And I try to braise these early on in the day because they take like six hours to braise.
02:18We don't do anything to the tongues themselves until after they're cooked, then we'll peel them.
02:23But for now, I'm going to build my braising liquid to braise the tongues in.
02:30I started doing this because I recently had a lengua taco that I just love so much.
02:36And I was like, why don't I ever do lengua in a pupusa? I'm like, this is crazy. I got to do it.
02:41Once our vegetables are like super roasted, I'm going to add my spices.
02:44I have some coriander, some cinnamon and some cumin.
02:49And we're going to add that in. We're going to roast that a little bit.
02:52With our dried chilies. And then we're going to add our salsa inglesa.
02:56And our salsa inglesa is like how it's made Worcestershire, basically.
02:59Worcestershire is like something you'll see on like a lot of tables in El Salvador.
03:03Probably because it goes so well with seafood and El Salvador is like really rich in seafood.
03:08But I use it for much other stuff.
03:10So I'm going to let that cook down and then I'm going to let that reduce for a little bit.
03:14I reduce it about halfway down and then I'll add my chicken stock.
03:20Once that's ready to go, I'm going to pour it over the beef tongues and then we'll braise them for six hours.
03:25So our pupusas, we normally only do two to three different varieties at a time.
03:31Right now we have pupusa de lengua, which is beef tongue pupusa.
03:35And then we have the pupusa de hongos, which is mushroom.
03:39Part of the reason is because I want people to order other things on the menu.
03:43And if people just eat tons of pupusas, they're just going to want to order hella pupusas.
03:46But I want people to know more about Salvadorian food than just pupusas.
03:53We're going to make our tamals.
03:55First, we're going to make our sofrito or base for our broth.
04:01I have some onions, some celery, some garlic.
04:04I got some tomatoes and some cilantro and some cilantro stems.
04:08We have relajo here.
04:10Relajo is like a Salvadorian spice mix.
04:14It is a base for a lot of sauces and broths.
04:18So we'll basically roast off the sofrito here.
04:21We're going to add our veg stock to this.
04:23And then we're going to let that simmer.
04:26Tamals are a big staple here at Popoca.
04:29And they're a big staple in El Salvador, which is why we have them on the menu.
04:32Right now we have a tamal piscas on the menu.
04:34We basically nixtamalize our corn with wood ash.
04:38The ash helps break down the corn so that it's more digestible.
04:45So a Salvadorian tamal is different than a Mexican tamal because you're adding your masa to your broth.
04:52And as your broth cooks the masa, it starts to thicken and it becomes almost like a little custardy.
04:58You get like a really soft, moist masa.
05:01I think with Mexican tamals, you're normally adding fat and seasoning to the masa itself.
05:07So it's a different texture.
05:09So I grew up here in California.
05:11I grew up in San Francisco and in San Jose.
05:13The first tamal I ever had was probably Mexican.
05:15And then when I had my first Salvadorian tamal, I was like, what the is this?
05:20It was so different than what I was used to.
05:22And then I was kind of like stuck on Salvadorian tamales.
05:26So now we're going to fill our tamales.
05:28I like to use ice cream scoop so we get like a perfect amount in there.
05:32We're going to fill it with a little bit of black bean.
05:35The tamal looks a little wet right now.
05:37Like you wouldn't want to eat it like that.
05:38Once you steam it, it sets even more.
05:40It'll come off of the banana leaf really easily.
05:45So our tamales are pretty popular.
05:47We end up prepping them about twice a week.
05:50Sometimes three times depending on how busy we are.
05:53This is my first batch of tamales that we're going to do here.
05:56And we'll see them for about 45 minutes to an hour.
05:59And then after that, they'll set and then we'll pull them down.
06:02And then they're ready to use.
06:05Now I'm going to brine our wings for our pollo campero
06:09so that they're ready for tomorrow for frying.
06:11There's some cumin in there.
06:13There's some pasilla negras and some puyas and some bay leaves.
06:17And brining it just really helps season the chicken all the way through.
06:21And it helps make the chicken just that much more juicy.
06:25In El Salvador, there is a place called pollo campero.
06:28It started in Guatemala, but it blew up in El Salvador.
06:31I wanted to put fried chicken on the menu so that I can pay a homage to that.
06:36Feeling of wanting fried chicken when you get to El Salvador.
06:39Like, it's a cultural thing.
06:41So now we're going to fry our pollo campero.
06:43I do a double fry.
06:44So we'll fry it for about seven minutes.
06:46So once I'm done frying off all this fried chicken,
06:49I'm going to let them cool off at room temperature.
06:52And then we'll cool them down and they'll be ready for service.
06:55During service, we'll fry them again for about five minutes.
06:58And we'll top them off with a little bit of panela in some of our house spice mix.
07:04And they're ready to serve.
07:13All right, y'all. So it's 3 p.m.
07:15So it's time to start a fire.
07:17And it's got to be ready for service.
07:19And we start service at 515.
07:20And because we cook with embers, I need a lot of embers.
07:23So we'll start a giant fire.
07:25And we'll start pulling embers and start warming up our plancha.
07:30Embers is a more controlled way of cooking.
07:32So I can choose how many embers I throw down.
07:35I can fan my embers to, like, a certain heat.
07:38And it's just an easier way to me to control the temperature of my cooking surfaces.
07:43It's 445. We got about 30 minutes before service.
07:47I'm gonna start shaping Pabusa so we have them ready for service tonight.
07:52So I'm gonna start grinding the cheese for the filling.
07:55I have a mix of Oaxaca and Monterey.
07:57And I like the mix because Monterey is a little more oily.
08:01Oaxaca is less oily, so it helps bind the cheese.
08:04End up with, like, a really nice stretch on my cheese.
08:07The cheese stretches, like, everything.
08:11When I know it's ready is when I can kind of pick it up.
08:15And it feels kind of like I can almost, like, roll it into, like, a ball.
08:19We use a lot of cheese.
08:23I actually have lactate pills for guests if they want them.
08:26They're like, are these mints? I'm like, no, it's lactate.
08:28This is the masa we made this morning.
08:30I keep them covered with the wet towel all through service.
08:32Make sure they stay nice and moist.
08:34If I don't do that, I'm gonna end up with, like, a really dry, dry masa ball.
08:38So now I'm gonna form my pupusas, and I'm gonna start with pupusas de ongos.
08:42These are oyster mushrooms.
08:43I love them because they're so meaty and, like, juicy.
08:47We'll grill the mushrooms over the wood fire.
08:50We'll chop them up into the cheese.
08:52We'll put some blackened butter.
08:54We'll put a little lemon zest, herbs.
08:56We just mix that into the cheese really well.
08:59I want to create, like, a cheese dough, essentially.
09:02And that's it.
09:04We're ready to make our pupusas.
09:09I want to start with a nice moist masa, and I'm basically gonna patty it.
09:15So I'm gonna add, I know it seems like a huge cheese to dough ratio,
09:20but it's honestly what makes the pupusas so good.
09:23Even though I grew up with a Salvadorian father, like, I didn't know how to make a pupusa until I was older.
09:31I went to El Salvador, and people were willing to teach me.
09:35One of the best places, they were cooking over a comal.
09:38It was the hardest thing ever because they were so busy.
09:41Like, they made so many pupusas in one night, and it was, like, my first night making them.
09:45And they were all making fun of me.
09:47It was, like, all women, too.
09:48One of my favorite pupusas is our pupusa de lengua.
09:52I'm gonna use this yellow masa.
09:54It's a bolita amarillo.
09:55This one, I start with cheese.
09:57And I kind of want to create, like, a little disc in my hand before I put it down.
10:01And then I'm gonna take my beef tongue.
10:03And this is the beef tongue after it's been, like, braised, diced, and then reduced.
10:10While these are cooking, I'm gonna grab our tamals that we steamed earlier.
10:13And I'm gonna take them and I'm gonna put them right here.
10:16And then we're just gonna let them get nice and smoky.
10:22Fire is a big part of what we do.
10:24I try to incorporate some type of smoke or fire into most of the dishes we do here.
10:30It's something I was excited about incorporating into our food
10:33because it's so traditional and it's so authentic, the Salvadorian food.
10:39We serve our pupusas with cortido.
10:43It's like a fermented cabbage.
10:45And then we also serve it with our salsa verde and our salsa roja.
10:51So as a kid growing up, this area right here where the cheese comes out and it gets really crispy,
10:57like, that's what you fight for.
11:07So our restaurant has been open for a year and a half.
11:10We are pretty busy these days.
11:14Seeing all the press and recognition was surprising and very humbling and very exciting.
11:19When people come to Popoca, I really want them to be open-minded and experience something new.
11:26We don't make traditional Salvadorian food, but we are really authentic in the way that we make our food.
11:32Our food.
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