El Sol de America, Washington, D.C.

A new Mexican/Salvadorean place opened in "Little Ethiopia" in the U Street Corridor last December. Yesterday, Robert and I happened upon it by accident, and what a happy discovery that was!

El Sol de America is on Ninth Street just a couple of doors south of U Street. It's a deep, narrow restaurant that has been nicely decorated in a very contemporary style using warm colors of reds, oranges, and yellows. Our table had a laminate top with an autumn leaf design in it, and the upholstery in the chairs was of a similar theme, so, I guess you could call the decor "upscale" casual.

As is typical of "Mexican" restaurants around here, they have the Mexican standards and also feature Salvadorean items, and our waitress told me that the cook was from El Salvador. In execution, they definitely tend more towards Salvadorean than Mexican with things like black beans instead of brown and white rice instead of tomatoey "Spanish" rice. I thought the menu concept was fresh, though, with the broad general categories covered but not overemphasized, and also with a few fun things like wild salmon and ceviche.

Robert ordered a pork burro, which is a sort of gigantic, fat burrito filled with meat, rice, beans, and vegetables. It was much larger than either of us expected--actually, it was probably twice as fat as expected--and he said it was quite good.

I ordered the "El Guanico" plate, featuring a very tender carne asada (grilled flank steak) topped with pico de gallo and with a pork pupusa revuelta accompanied by spicy pickled cabbage, a deliciously sweet plain corn tamale, and some sliced fried plantains. Everything was artistically arranged on a nice rectangular plate, and, unlike many Mexican places, they did not seek to fill up the plate by loading it down with rice and beans--in fact, I didn't have either of those things.

The dessert selection was fairly standard, but sounded tempting. Robert got a slice of the tres leches cake, and I sampled a couple of bites. They seemed to have made a bundt cake that was soaked in the "three milks" and drizzled with dulce de leche and garnished with whipped cream. It was delicious, and probably the best tres leches I've had in D.C.

Too bad I didn't have my camera with me yesterday. Robert had his, but he'd used up all his batteries taking cherry blossom pictures over the weekend, so we weren't able to get any pictures. That's a shame, because the food was artfully done and would have been very photogenic.

El Sol is definitely worth a trip to check it out. We plan to try it again, and I've heard that not only do they stay open til midnight every day, they serve breakfast, too!