Central America

Technically part of the North American continent, the seven nations that compose Central America have significant culinary overlap with Mexico and the Caribbean – but much that is distinct, as well. Apace with immigration trends, the Central American restaurant community has exploded over the past two decades, particularly with Salvadoran options.

by Nikki Buchanan, Leah LeMoine, Craig Outhier & Madison Rutherford

Long a British territory, the Caribbean nation is not exactly bursting with culinary innovation, but it can claim chimole, a dark soup of chicken, boiled eggs and achiote paste. Alas, we could not find it in the Valley.

The Valley is not blessed with a Costa Rican restaurant, per se, but it does have República Empanada in Mesa (republicaempanada.com), owned by the Maraz family, which partly hails from the bicoastal nation. Thus, you will find redolent gusts of matriarch Jinette Maraz’s homeland on the pan-Latin menu, from the beef-olive-raisin medley in the El Capitan empanada to the piping-hot potatoes in the Jalapeño Popper empanada, seasoned with achiote, a scarlet spice powerfully conneced to Costa Rican food.

Tucked under Honduras on the Pacific side of the Central American isthmus, El Salvador has a pork- and seafood-centric food culture but is best known as the birthplace of the pupusa, a thick flatbread made from corn flour (unlike the European wheat-flour empanada) and originating with pre-Columbian Nawat people. Gooily stuffed with melted cheese and meat, pupusas can be found in virtually any Salvadoran restaurant, which now number about a dozen in the Valley.

3 Places for Pupusas & More

From tamales negros (made with chocolate, raisins and prunes added to the masa dough) to pepián de pollo (chicken in a roasty recado stew), much of Guatemalan cuisine bears the hallmarks of ancient Mayan cooking. Tamales are a culinary way of life in the country (which borders Mexico’s Chiapas region), done in a dizzying variety of styles, but Guatelinda Restaurant & Bakery (guatelinda-restaurant-bakery.negocio.site) in Mesa goes well beyond them with an all-day menu fit for multi-visit exploration (see below).

glossary

fiambre /fee-AHM-bray/
Essentially antipasti on steroids, this Guatemalan salad can feature as many as 50 ingredients (hard-boiled eggs, prosciutto-wrapped asparagus, cornichons, etc.) and is a traditional meal on All Saints’ Day. 

Fusing Mesoamerican, Spanish, Afican and Caribbean traditions, Honduran cuisine is perhaps the most syncretic and complex of Central America’s cooking styles – and arguably its most intoxicating. Thankfully, the Granados family opened Taste of Honduras (7828 N. 19th Ave., 602-354-2649) in the Christown Spectrum area in 2018, giving the Valley its most concentrated dose yet of the nation’s ample culinary endowments (see below).

It’s an unkind but provable truth: The farther south you go on the Central American isthmus, the less interesting the food gets… and the harder to locate in Greater Phoenix. We tried and failed to find nacatamal (basically, an over-size tamale) but we did turn up the country’s national dish: gallo pinto (translation: “spotted rooster), a mash-up of red beans and rice served at pan-Latin Mesa mainstay República Empanada (republicaempanada.com), named for its dappled appearance.

Formally separated from Colombia (with the help of the canal-hungry U.S.) in 1903, the southernmost Central American nation generally has a secondhand food culture, borrowing dishes like sancocho from Colombia.