El Rinconcito Café — Restaurant in Washington

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASEEEE ALL POC DO NOT SPEND YOUR MONEY HERE!! Had a horrible experience the weekend of my bachelorette party. Me and my friend (both female poc) stopped in this cafe after a liquor store run to get food to go. Sat at the bar and decided to order drinks while we waited for our food. Of course we were asked for ID (standard of course). We both have and provide our passports. The manager is sitting at the bar as well eating. He proceeds to “double check” our IDs and is very skeptical. He then starts asking us follow up questions about our IDs. Very weird, we automatically feel uncomfortable and accusatory. He tells my friend that her passport photo her “hair is different” we are women, of course we change our hairstyles from time to time. He also questions the address that’s on her ID. (She was born in a different state, like many people in the US). He then comments on the shade of lipstick that she’s wearing in the passport photo saying it makes her look older in the pic, and takes it further to tell both of us that it’s weird we have passports and they don’t see them often. Like, come on. It’s Washington DC…so many international tourist visit and you don’t get passports?? Disclaimer I’m 29 and my friend is 27..definitely above the legal drinking age. He never even asks to see a second form of ID from us which we both had. We explain to him that we literally just used our passports at the liquor store down the street. All in all, we did not get the drinks we wanted. Even contemplated on canceling the food Togo order but they had made it already. We just paid and left. A truly embarrassing shameful situation. To be scolded bc our hairstyle is different in our passports was insane. PLEASE DO NOT DINE HERE THE MANAGER DISCRIMINATES AGAINST...

El Rinconcito Cafe (translating to "The Little Corner Cafe") is a small Salvadorian restaurant that provides a breath of fresh (tasty) air to the largely new American flavors in this area of D.C. With friendly staff, their menu is pretty big - but the pupusas are the star here.

The chicken and pork pupusas provide a hearty bite for under $5 each, though my favorite is the lorocco (edible flower), which adds a mild taste reminiscent of a faint artichoke or asparagus. The pupusas themselves are seared perfectly, with just a bit of cheese oozing out. And while some pupusas can be quite oily and wet, El Rinconcito manages to let the bread and fillings shine without overusing additional fats. A+ pupusas through and through.

The slaw and sauce on the side is a perfect fresh accompaniment to the pupusas. I just wish they provide more of the sauce as the Salvadorian style salsa really brings life to pupusas.

The corn tamale is also pretty tasty (moist with little chunks of smashed sweet corn) and saved me from starving during a long wait from delayed flights.

They also have Horchata, but the flavor is a bit different from what you might traditionally expect - and, as I found out later, that's because Salvadorian Horchata is made differently than Mexican Horchata! Using Morro, cocoa, and other bold flavors, the Horchata has a sweeter, chocolate-y, earthy flavor to it.

Sitting near a street corner, the restaurant is snug and ideal for an outing with a friend or two rather than a large group. For a very affordable and delicious snack or lunch, El Rinconcito is a fantastic spot to...

Had a very poor experience at this restaurant. When we got there, we were asked by a very disrespectful server about what we “want from them”, which I assume is their way of asking what our order is. After half an hour of waiting outside of their restaurant with a lot of other people, we went inside to check the progress on our food preparation. None of the staff could care that we were inside waiting to ask a question. Eventually, we were told that they haven’t even started our order. Half an hour later (total of one hour now), we checked in and were treated very poorly by a server who showed visible frustration at us for asking about food that we had ordered an hour earlier. Finally, after 1 hour and 45 minutes of waiting, our food arrived and we opened the boxes to find the beans were cold and mixed in with the rice from the way they were handling the boxes. I went back in to ask for a discount or partial refund and the same server who was being rude earlier acted like she had no power in doing anything and was basically wanting us to leave. In the time that we ordered and waited for our food to-go, two families who were behind us not only got seats but finished their meals and left. Very slow service, food wasn’t that special (some of the mixtures were cold), and service staff were very dismissive, flustered, and rude. Not returning and would not...