El Cuscatleco

Love it! Been looking for a place near us with pupusas, and we’ve struck gold! The cheese and jalapeño one is delish and the pork is devine!

Good place. I had sopa de mariscos. That dish is pricy, but it is OK since it is seafood. I have not tried pupusas yet, but I will in my next visit.

Great authentic Salvadoran food! Their pupusas remind me of the ones back home. Also they serve you some great complimentary chips and salsa. Their plantains were also great and delicious. Waitress was also very nice and attentive and she gave great recommendations and answered all my questions

We had the pupusas and they were great! The service needs to be worked on but other than that the food was awesome!

I am from Honduras, so I really needed to check this place out. My expectations were low… boy was I surprise. Really authentic. great pupusas and amazing Honduran enchiladas (nothing like Mexican enchiladas). I recomend this place

Mexican/​Salvadoran/​Honduran food. There are actually quite a few places like this on the Terminal Square /​Garret Road block of Upper Darby. This one is relatively new.
Pupusas (stuffed fluffy corn tortillas) are the «must-​order» item at $ 2.50 per. There of these would make a meal for the average person (and they are served with a cabbage slaw, so you DO get a «green vegetable.» I split a mashed-​pork and cheese version with the wife. We COULD have eaten several more. Fresh and made to order. The menu is HUGE and basically broken down into Mexican/​Salvadoran/​Hunduran sections. Most of the ingredients are common among them, but the preparations of beef/​chicken/​pork/​shrimp/​goat/​tongue/​sausage/​fish vary radically. We went
with the Honduran side. As I had made up my mind on the fired chicken (UBER crispy — cornmeal crusted) wife went the easy way with Carne Asada (thin-​pounded flank steak marinated in lime juice and garlic.)
The horchata (sweetened rice/​water with cinnamon) was very thirst-​quenching and cheap.
We were the only gringos in the place. Waitress speaks SOME English, but not enough to make recommendations or discuss a lot of detail, so be prepared to guess a lot. Most of the preparations are self-​explanatory. Portions were VERY large (if you count the cabbage and plantains.) Certainly a good deal for the price. Lunch for two, splitting a pupusa) was $ 30. We will definitely go back. Food is not REALLY spicy, but more delicately seasoned with stuff like cilantro and lime juice. Would be fine for kids.

I am surprised of all the positive reviews for this restaurant I found this place and since I’m salvadorian I was just excited to give it a try. I bought quesadillas, and the salvadorian steak platter. I gave this place a one star because of the food. I honestly didn’t enjoy it my food was over salted and I was very disappointed in the rice and beans. I’d figure I get salvadorian rice and got white rice with a side of beans. The quesadillas were dried out. I’ve eaten Latin food all my life and this definitely doesn’t represent Central American food. I won’t be eating here again :(

I almost don’t want to write this review.
I want this to be a secret delicious hole in the wall nobody can ever know about.
but that’s not fair.
food this good belongs to the world.
I’ll start by making a pro con list. I should warn you that the pro’s outweigh the cons by a landslide.
Con’s:
–In a super inconvenient location– you basically need to have a car to eat there
–The service is friendly but not necessarily helpful
–We tried to order a couple different things on the menu and most of it wasn’t available (no guac, no pork etc)
–The décor isn’t amazing (but lets be honest you are coming here for the food not the ambiance)
Pro’s:
–Pupusas (seriously. get them and then cry because it’s over and then smile because it happened.)
–the salsa’s (not too salty not too spicy. literally just perfection)
–BYOB
–Lots of metered parking infront
–crazy cheap (my entire meal was 5 dollars)
Basically the pro’s win because pupusa’s are like a salvadorian angel descending from heaven and delivering you a delicious food baby in your mouth.
It was my first experience eating pupusa’s and if you’ve never had one you, too, should absolutely try it if you are a fan of delicious things.

Awesome, authentic Latino food. Reasonable, large portions. The only problem was that my server’s English was worse than my Spanish and she wasn’t able to answer too many questions about the menu.

Stopped by for a quick bite with some friends before seeing a show at the Tower Theater and I am so glad I did. I am a huge pupusa fan so I was so happy they were not only on the menu, but very fresh, authentic, and delicious. And my bf is salvadorian so he can definitely vouch for that as well! Not to mention there a couple of choices of fillings (cheese, cheese and bean, and pork). Of course, they were served with bowls of tomato sauce and pickled cabbage. They did a good job with the pickled cabbage! Also, the cheese they use is imported from latin America — super authentic snd amazing. We were also given a basket of tortilla chips topped with beans and queso fresco and a side of two spicy salsas before our mesl — a surprising and yummier alternative to the basic chips and salsa. It is a small, probably family owned and run business. Service was prompt and polite. You can order in Spanish or English.

For the area this is a great find specially if you are from the central American countries. The local is not a 5 star restaurant but when the food is delicious who cares about the décor. My favorite is the pupusas and baleadas something simple but delicious. I would recommend one coming here if you can get pass the decorations.

Menu organized somewhat poorly. Lax on refilling waters. Difficult to communicate with server. Platanos were good; Tamarind juice was meh. The best thing about my carne azada was the rice. Pollo Asada was too salty. Cash only.

Make sure to bring a friend who is decently good at Spanish.
My husband I went and the night started off kind of funny– the waitress couldn’t understand us, even though I was speaking in what I thought was Spanish, as well as pointing to the order in the menu! She went to grab someone in the back, who was able to understand us and put the order in.
We were pleasantly surprised with complimentary tortilla chips (housemade, I think) with a heavier pico de gallo, as well as a tomatillo salsa (the green stuff you see in the pictures). The pinto beans and cheese on the chips was a nice touch, and I would have happily eaten more.
The pupusas were really tasty, although I’m not sure if the one I have was the loroco or revueltas… ;) They are a bit expensive, at $ 2.50 each.
For entrees, T ordered the Parrilladas Salvadorena, and I got the Rellenos de Lengua.
The parrilladas came with pork, chorizo, chicken, and shrimp, all seasoned super well, and had nice charbroiled-​tastes to them.
I got the Rellenos de lengua, which was lightly egg-​battered beef tongue cooked in tomatoes until the tongue was practically falling apart. This was delicious!
Both entrees came with pico de gallo (different than the one served with the house chips), some shredded iceberg lettuce, tomato, and a few slices of avocado. The rice was just alright; I think it was just rice with butter or lard (?). Pinto beans were tender but not fancy nor greasy.
We liked it a lot, and are actually returning tomorrow, where we will have the help of our Spanish speaking friend who told us about the place ;)

Hey I’m giving El Cuscatleco five stars for just part of the menu. I’ll explain. El Cuscatleco — which is a word for anyone or thing related to El Salvador — basically has three menus. One El Salvadoran, one Honduran, and one Mexican. I have never tried anything from the Mexican menu as there are Mexican restaurants everywhere in Philadelphia but El Salvadoran and Honduran restaurants are much rarer. That’s too bad because Central American food can be quite tasty. And it is the El Salvadoran and Honduran menus that I order off of in this unassuming Upper Darby eatery.
I think everyone knows the most famous food from El Salvador — pupusas … and here these stuffed corn tortillas are flavorfully rendered. I especially liked the Pupusa Revuelta (pork & cheese) and the Loroco Flower Pupusa. Nicely accompanying them is a tomato and cabbage side from El Salvador. Well the counterpart to pupusas in Honduras are the Honduran delicacy of Baleadas. Baleadas are made from flour tortillas and are larger than pupusas. They are just as tasty. I had the Baleada Sencilla which contained refried beans, cheese, and sour cream. Meals begin with a serving of nachos accompanied by both a homemade green and a red chili sauce. There are many other El Salvadoran and Honduran dishes to try here so I will stick to Central American cuisine whenever I come here.
El Cuscatleco has an attractive dining room and the service is friendly. It is located in the international restaurant row on Garrett Road. Definitely check it out!

The food was absolutely delicious! This is the ONLY restaurant within the Philadelphia region serving authentic Pupusas and I am soooo happy I found this place. Other reviewers have commented on the curtido and how it’s a bit watery and the cabbage a bit too finely sliced which it is. But I think this is because their curtido resembles that of other Central American countries (like Honduras and Costa Rica) instead of the classic Salvadorian one. We also had the yuca frita con chicharron (fried cassava and fried pork meaty bits, not the Mexican kind) and sopa de res (beef and veggies soup). The beef soup was a little anemic — more soup than beef and veggies — but still delicious. The soup was accompanied with white rice and salvadoran styled handmade tortillas. I will definitely be back with more people to try out the other items on the menu!

what a disappointment to see Don Memo closed in Upper Darby. Still in the mood for Mexican, we decided to try this place. Just from the clientele, it appears that this place is probably authentic; however, I was pretty disappointed with my dish. I really didn’t like the seasoning of the chicken in my chicken enchilada dish. Don’t know what it was but it had a slight hot dog taste and I detest hot dogs! The rice and beans were pretty good.

The pupusas are fine. Their accompanying cabbage is a little watery and too finely shredded, but the salsa is not bad. The tamal de elote is overly fluffy and watery and has only the faintest far-​off flavor of corn. Whatever the filling is in the pastelitos, it is not the «ground beef & vegetables» promised by the menu. I think it’s shredded pork, maybe; it has a boiled flavor. The refritos are pretty good.
We went out of our way to find Salvadoran food, but this place isn’t worth the trip. If I lived around the corner, I’d go for the pupusas again.

The menu is Salvadorean, Mexican, Honduran. Too big to review, but I had pleasant flashbacks to the Mission in SF (where I lived within stumbling distance of so many Mexican and Salvadorean restaurants. We had late night pupusas, tacos and burritos instead of Wawa).
The pupusas with queso and loroco (some kind of flower bud) were very good, served with a tomato sauce and curtido – a cabbage slaw. A little cheesier than I’m used to, but very flavorful. I’d go back for them… but there are few places to get them.
The menu as a whole was too extensive to evaluate. Tacos de lengua were okay. Al pastor tacos okay. My daughter ate the steak out of her tacos cause her new braces were bothering her. My friend’s enchiladas weren’t obscenely overloaded with melted cheese, and served with a sprinkling of queso fresco. All good.
We had been headed to try Don Memo, so we’d brought a bottle of tequila for margaritas… but Don Memo was packed with college kids celebrating a birthday. So we brought our bottle of tequila into El Cuscatleco… and they offered to make us margaritas! Might’ve been from a mix, but they were very, very drinkable.
I am glad Don Memo’s was too crowded to even let us wait…

My husband and I were looking for authentic Mexican food. We accidental found this location because our initial location was packed. The waitress was so nice! The food was good too. It was not crowded but the people in there were so nice! We would come back. It is not fancy and is reasonable.