LATIN AMERICAN FOOD CRAWL IN JP

As you all know, I'm a frequent reader of Chowhound. Especially on days when I'm stuck at the store for hours on end and have nothing else to do. (Like today. Well really, I should be training my new employee, but she's called in sick. Always a bad sign, but not the first time it's happened. We'll see how it goes). At any rate, not so long ago I was surfing around looking for some good cheap eats in Boston and stumbled upon this posting of a JP Food Crawl. So I decided that I wanted to reproduce the crawl, with some minor modifications. (El Oriental de Cuba got firebombed a couple of years ago, and was just reopened recently, so we didn't go there. Plus it was a little farther away than any of the other places. And I got food poisoning the one time I did eat there).

So with addresses in my pocket and Leah and Jayna in tow, we went on our own JP Crawl. Luckily all the places we went are located on Centre St., within 3 blocks of each other. We started off at La Pupusa Guanaca, for an appetizer of pupusas. Now, all of the places we went would be correctly categorized as hole in the walls. Really simple places, plastic utensils, paper plates, you get the idea. But that means that it's cheap. And I like cheap. At La Pupusa Guanaca we each got a chicken pupusa (pictured below).
You'll notice that it was served with a side of hot sauce and some pickled veggies. These were actually pretty good. Warm and tasty. The hot sauce really wasn't that hot, tho. And according to the chowhound posts, the pickled veggies were supposed to be the best part, which I didn't really agree with. To me, they were crunchy, but kinda tasteless. Still, it was only $1.75 and much better than the ones I'd had at Orinoco and cost 4 times the price. (apparently they've raised their prices; I had seen posts stating that the price used to be $1.25 or $1.50). Jayna also got a cheese empanada, which I think she enjoyed, and a traditional drink of horchata.
We were still quite hungry, and so moved on to our second destination, Alex's Chimi. Now, this place was a bit bigger (more seating) than La Pupusa. When you enter, there's no menu or indication of how you should be ordering, so you basically follow everyone else and line up in front of the large hot table. Peering into the table, you could see roasted chicken stacked up on top, along with some fried pork ribs. The bottom layer was filled with different side dishes. Leah and I decided to split an order of chicken. (I had read that this place had good sandwiches, and tried to order one, but apparently, I was mistaken). With our order of half a chicken, we got a side of fried plantains and rice.
Jayna got basically the same thing, except she got patatas instead of rice. That's what we were told. Which translates to potatoes, but these things didn't look like potatoes to us. Oh well. The chicken was ok. The white meat I ate was pretty dry, but I enjoyed the well seasoned skin. Plus this entire thing costs us $8.

Our last stop was at Tacos el Charro. We were surprised to find the restaurant empty. But it was a cold fall evening. Leah accurately summed up the decor of the place by stating that it looked a lot like someone's basement rec room, but since it was empty, we had the whole place to ourselves. The waitress was super super nice to us. And quickly brought us a bag of chips and salsa. The salsa was clearly homemade, but it was still weak and watery. I did like the chips, though. They were great with a bit of salt. Since all of us were pretty full by this point, we ended up sharing an orders of tacos (3 per order. Jayna and I got chicken while Leah ordered beef) and an order of guacamole.I found the guacamole to be an odd bright green color. It almost didn't look like real avocadoes. And I also found the texture really strange. It was almost thick, like an order of white bean spread that'd been dyed green. Other than mashing the avocadoes, I'm not sure what else went into this guacamole. Needless, to see, I was not a big fan. But all was forgiven when our tacos arrived. Yes, I realize that this looks small and plain, but don't be fooled. This was one of the tastiest tacos I've ever had. The chicken was incredibly flavorful and juicy and I just loved it. Plus the corn tortilla was really soft and yummy. Dare I say it? I think this place had better tacos than El Pelon and Leah declared the tacos the winner of the night. I'll definitely be back for a full order all to myself. So I'm glad to have gone on this crawl, hung out with my friends and enjoyed some great Latin American food. Stay tuned for our next crawl!