Balompié Cafe #3 — Restaurant in San Francisco

I've been craving pupusas for a while now, and saw this place pop up on both my Instagram and in a conversation with a friend. There are 2 locations from Balompie Cafe, but we opted for this one because I figured parking in the Mission would be a nightmare.

For what seemed like a pretty random location, the place was packed at almost 2pm on a Saturday. Everyone was eating different things but most tables had pupusas. I'm curious to check out the other items now as the portions looked very generous. The ambience of the restaurant was pretty much like a cafeteria, you're there just for the eating.

The pupusas are super generously stuffed with cheese! There was even delicious burnt cheese that had oozed out of the pupusa. Yum. It also went perfectly with the pickled cabbage and tomato sauce they serve with the pupusas on the side. You can ask for more of each one if you run low. Pupusas: Steak & Cheese - this was my favorite! I liked the char on the steak paired with the generous oozy cheese Shrimp & Cheese Salvadorean Vegetable & Cheese - my second favorite, I really liked the vegetables with the cheese. I'm not entirely sure what vegetable it was but it was great. Ground Pork, Jalapenos & Cheese Best part? Each pupusa only cost about $4!!! What a steal in the city considering how 2 pupusas make a pretty filling meal for one person.

Price and food quality deserve a 5 stars, but I'm taking a star away for the incredibly slow service. It was ridiculous to wait almost 45 minutes for 4 pupusas at my table, so I would only go again when I've got...

The food actually deserves the 5 stars but the service deserves less than 3. We went with my family and we were aware that the place is small and we would need to wait longer than usual to be seated. However, the people that were ahead of us were seated and people that came after were seated before us as well. There were times where there was three tables next to each other and all they had to do is put them together but they decided to seat groups of two or 4 before our group of 6. Really? We talked about it with the server but she lacked customer service. Their argument was that those tables were for groups of 2 only. 0-o... Anyway, we decided to seat in separate tables since we were hungry. As we ordered there was a bigger table available and we decided to move to that table so we could be together and the not so friendly server said "I told you that you cannot be moving around" even though we left other tables available? WTH?!!

Long story, long (lol), we got our food and to be honest being Salvadoran, the pupusas are some of the best ones in the area. I definitely recommend this place for food quality but DO NOT come with a group of 4 or more, otherwise you'll either wait for more than an hour to be seated or you'll get the...

I have never had Salvadoran food and the pupusas are really different enough from tacos that I wanted to give it a try.

To get a better experience, I visited the place when it had just opened, when the restaurant had been opened for a few hours, and when the place was about to close.

The service and food quality were the best when the place had just opened: both pupusas had been cooked (not raw) and each had similar amounts of shrimp and cheese in it.

However, when the place had been opened for a while, both food and service quality became inconsistent. For example, one pupusa had SOME cheese and shrimp in it, but the other had almost neither.

And although the place closed at 8, they wouldn't take orders at around 7:30, not even to go, so go early.

As the price is low and the food is really quite filling, I think even if food quality and service aren't consistent (at all), I can recommend it only if you want some food to be quick and filling and don't care about either food quality or service quality (communion has never been easy, even just pointing at menu items and indicating how many...