
Pupuseria El Centroamericano is a brand new restaurant in North Center in the space formerly occupied by Don Pedro Mexican Restaurant. It's a family affair - mom is from El Salvador and dad is from Nicaragua. The adult daughters run the day to day. Mom and dad have opened and sold at least 4 restaurants in the Chicago area, 2 in the city and 2 in the suburbs (I was eavesdropping and didn't get all the details).
The menu has food from El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala and Mexico with the first two sections being significantly larger than the other two.


While pupuseria is in the name, it was the nacatamales, that, along with the fact that it's two blocks from my house, will get me coming back. I'd never heard of nacatamales before tonight. I'm actually fairly certain this was my first time having Nicaraguan food anywhere. My bad.

There was a ton of flavor going on in this banana leaf wrapped tamal. The server (one of the daughters) told me several ingredients, including bell peppers and olives, which I didn't see but definitely believe I tasted, mint leaves, which were the most prominent aromatic, and bitter orange. There is apparently always meat in a nacatamal and this one had a chunk of tender (maybe a smidge dry) pork along with a chunk of potato. Even without the addition of lime and some spicy green salsa, this was really a great dish, but you're definitely going to want to at least squeeze the lime on there.


I'm no pupusa expert and I enjoyed these made to order ones just fine. But I thought they had too much cheese. So much in fact, that I'm not sure that I would have been able to tell the cheese and chicharron one apart from the cheese and loroco one.
I'll get the pupusas again because it's so close, but I wouldn't tell someone to go far out of their way. The nacatamal, on the other hand, is definitely worth checking out. I'm looking forward to going back to try more of the menu to see what other discoveries there are.
Pupuseria El Centroamericano
4064 N Lincoln Ave
(773) 799-8781