Highland Park Pupuseria Under a Star Sign: Las Cazuelas

Las Cazuelas Restaurant & Pupuseria, at 5707 N Figueroa St, sits between Avenue 57 and Avenue 58 in the middle of Highland Park's main commercial strip. The restaurant's own About page calls it three decades strong and says it has served the neighborhood for over 30 years, which makes it one of the older Salvadoran kitchens on the Northeast LA side of the city. Most visitors find it by the old-school star-shaped sign out front.

The restaurant tells its story through one name: every recipe, the About page says, is inspired by Mama Ney's legacy. It is candid about how the business survived. When the Salvadoran population around Figueroa was smaller, the family added Mexican dishes such as tacos to keep the doors open, and that hybrid menu is still the one you get today, with pupusas and Salvadoran plates printed alongside tacos, burritos and caldos.

That mix has drawn press for a long time. In July 2006 L.A. Taco wrote that the pupusas here were a bit crispy, a bit light and extra delicious, praised the cabbage and the plantains with refried beans, and described a big family-style room with a jukebox and friendly service. In 2015 PBS SoCal included Las Cazuelas in its series on iconic neighborhood restaurants in Highland Park, calling the menu a hybrid of Mexican, Salvadoran and Americana tastes.

PBS also captured the building's place on the block. Its streetside photo showed the dining room bookended by its neighbors on Figueroa, a stretch that has filled with cafes, bars and boutiques over the past decade while this family dining room kept its sign, its booths and its pupusa griddle.

The official food menu keeps the pupusa section simple. Queso, chicharrón, revueltas, revueltas con frijol, queso y frijoles, loroco, chorizo and pollo are all $4.95 each. The loroco is listed as the veggie option, filled with the edible flower buds that give Salvadoran cheese pupusas their faintly green, herbal bite. Revueltas, the classic mix of chicharrón and cheese, is the one most first-timers start with.

Two upgrades sit at the bottom of the list. Masa de arroz, a rice-dough pupusa that comes out thinner and more delicate than the corn version, is $5.50. The vegan cheese pupusa is $6.50, which makes this one of the few older Salvadoran places in the area that prints a dairy-free option on its own menu. Every order arrives with curtido, the vinegary cabbage slaw that L.A. Taco singled out back in 2006, and a thin tomato salsa.

A practical way to order for two people is four pupusas, one each of revueltas, loroco, queso y frijoles and pollo, plus a shared plate from the Salvadoran side of the menu. That gives you most of the textures the kitchen does, from crisp cheese edges to soft bean fillings, for under $20 in pupusas.

The rest of the Salvadoran menu is where this kitchen shows its range. Platanos fritos con crema y frijoles, fried sweet plantains with Salvadoran cream and refried beans, is $12.50 and works as a side or a dessert. Yuca con chicharrón, cassava with sautéed pork, is $15.00. Pan con pollo, the Salvadoran chicken sandwich soaked in its sauce, is $14.50, and pastelitos de carne, small fried meat pies, are $12.00.

Tamales de elote, sweet corn tamales, are $12.00, and salpicón, the finely minced meat dish, is $15.50. Casamiento, the rice and beans mix that goes with nearly everything, is $4.50. For breakfast, the desayuno típico, listed simply as the typical breakfast, is $18.00, and since the kitchen opens at 9 am it is a real morning option rather than an all-day afterthought.

The biggest bowl on the menu is siete mares, the seven seas seafood soup, at $27.00. It is the dish to order on a cool evening when a group wants something to share between pupusa rounds. For parties and office lunches, the menu also offers a platter of 20 pupusas revueltas for $99.95.

Las Cazuelas serves beer, wine and margaritas. Mango and chamoy, lime and strawberry margaritas are $9.00 each on the drink menu, and pitchers of Corona, Pacifico or Modelo Especial are $13.00. The drink menu adds one firm rule in its fine print: you must order food to order beer, and the limit is one pitcher per person.

The specials page runs a happy hour from 3 pm to 6 pm Monday through Thursday, with $5 margaritas and $8 beer pitchers. October listings on the page also include a Taco Tuesday deal on the Mexican side of the menu, and the events calendar has a Halloween night on October 31 for which the restaurant invites guests to come in costume.

The official site lists the restaurant as open every day from 9 am to 9 pm. The weekday happy hour window is the cheapest time to drink here. This is a full-service, sit-down restaurant: you take a table, order from a server and pay at the end, which is a change of pace from the counter-service pupuserias found elsewhere in the city.

Groups are welcome. The restaurant takes private party and group reservation inquiries through its website, and online ordering for pickup and delivery runs through its own Toast page, linked from the homepage under Order Now. For a weekend dinner with six or more people, the reservation route saves a wait at the door.

The Highland Park station on the Metro A Line, on Avenue 57 by Marmion Way, is about a block north of the restaurant, so this is one of the easiest pupuserias in the county to reach by train from Union Station or Pasadena. Walking south along Figueroa after dinner takes you past a row of storefronts that mixes old family businesses with newer bars and shops.

Two blocks down, Highland Park Bowl has been a bowling alley since 1927 and still runs as a bowling alley and bar. Folliero's Italian Food and Pizza, a few doors further south, has been run by the Folliero family since 1968 and is the other long-running name on this strip, a useful landmark for anyone who knew Highland Park before the boom.

Las Cazuelas Restaurant & Pupuseria, 5707 N Figueroa St, Los Angeles, CA 90042, between Avenue 57 and Avenue 58 in Highland Park. Phone (323) 255-4719. Open daily 9 am to 9 pm. Corn pupusas $4.95, masa de arroz $5.50, vegan cheese pupusa $6.50, pan con pollo $14.50, siete mares $27.00. Happy hour Monday to Thursday 3 pm to 6 pm. Beer only with food, one pitcher per person. Metro A Line Highland Park station is a block north.