El Salvador

Eastside Road, Healdsburg, August 26, 2009 —

AFTER A MORNING IN Berkeley we didn't feel like lingering there for lunch, so stopped off at a Salvadorean restaurant halfway home, in Rohnert Park, though it was a little too close to supper.

We know the owner-chef, Rocio, because she worked at the Downtown Bakery and Creamery in its early days, when Lindsey was there two days a week. She's a very sweet, serious woman, a hard worker, a woman well attuned to family and the kind of attentiveness and generosity shared family responsibilities naturally develop. Everything on the menu at her restaurant — and there's a lot on the menu — seems to be made by her hands and from her heart and mind. Her husband's in the kitchen, too, but I think it's her sensibility that informs the cooking here. And her sensibility is informed by her mother's, I'm sure, and by her childhood experiences.

El Malecon is named for the embarcadero facing the beach in Rocio's native Puerto de la Libertad, in El Salvador. She told us that as a child she often walked up into the country behind the beach to visit relatives — a ten-hour walk, each way — and that the time in the country was her favorite time as a child. (When I suggested that her cousins probably recalled time at the beach as their best time, she smiled and agreed.)
The food at El Malecon has country heartiness and depth of flavor, and intelligence and subtlety that I could easily attribute to a port and its intersections of cuisine. Maybe I'm romanticizing; that happens. Whatever the source, the food is very tasty, the flavors pointed with their individual sources, while merging into combinations that seem to reconfigure imaginatively even while you're eating.
I wish I could have had the dish in the photo above, but I can't eat shrimp. They were sautéed along with onions, celery, peppers, and herbs; the chili and olive oil are apparent in the photo.
What I did have was the Tipico Salvadoreño #2: eggs scrambled with chorizo, with house-made thick tortillas, and quite delicious beans with rice. An excellent lunch.

Beer: Pilsener "Centenario"

El Malecon, 217 Southwest Blvd., Rohnert Park, CA 94928; tel. (707) 794-9047; http://www.elmalecon.biz/