San Salvador Restaurants

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Restaurante Las Cofradias is a great place to try Cocina Típica (traditional Salvadoran cuisine). There is a delicious buffet for just $8. The soups and desserts are particularly good as are the home-made soft drinks. There are plenty of vegetarian options here, made from corn, yucca and plantain. The service is very friendly and helpful too.

Opening hours:
Mon: 4pm-11pm, Tues, Thurs, Fri & Sat: 8am-1am, Sun: 10am-11pm

Why on earth would you travel to a country 4000 miles away and go to a Pizza Hut when there are so many great local cuisine restaurants to try? That was my thought when I went to this place 3 years ago. I have been there twice since and it has been great every time. When you pull into the parking lot you will first notice 2-3 armed and uniformed security guards in the lot...typical of ES. When you enter the immaculately clean and brightly appointed restaurant you will be greeted by one if not two great hosts that will determine your need and get you quickly to the table. All of the employees are decked out in clean,crisp attractive uniforms and every detail right down to the proper name badge is consistant throughout the restaurant. The supervisors are all wired with headsets and monitor the activity in the restaurant so that nothing fails. We have always had a birthday person in our groups and the Pizza Hut crew does a great job with singing and other props that I will not give away here! When you leave you will all get free mints.

Favorite Dish: The pizza is great... better than any Pizza Hut or for that matter any other chain pizza place that I have been to. The salad bar is bountiful and attractive particularly if you have been avoiding fresh vegetables and salad elsewhere in the country for health reasons.
Several people in our group of 19 had another Italian dishes like rigatoni and it was good

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La Hóla, a take on “The Wave” is one of the restaurants along what used to be the popular nightlife strip called La Zona Rosa. A seafood eatery, the entire upstairs of the restaurant is made to be like a Pacific beach club, complete with thatched roofs and campy seating. The menu is packed with seafood dishes, but there are also pizzas and sandwiches, and the crowd appears to come here primarily for the drinks. The staff is helpful, but if you’re not there in a group ordering numerous drinks before you even hit the food, you’re unlikely to get quick service.

Favorite Dish: I had the Salvadorean shrimp soup. It was tasty and served in a bread bowl, but wasn’t all that memorable. The spicing was nice, and there were plenty of shrimp, but in all it just sort of tasted like a shrimp chowder.

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La Pampa Argentina is another of the well-recommended restaurants in the Zona Rosa, an area of San Benito that was once the heart of nightlife in San Salvador. The restaurant presents itself as being much fancier than its price-range, which is a rather pleasing combination. The décor is tasteful without being either plain or kitschy, and the waiters here are experienced and helpful. While it is quite pleasant to spend one's time on the balcony, it is wise not to sit too close to the edge during the rainy season, as sudden thunderstorms can cause rain to come under the awning. The food is very nicely presented and portions here are on the large side, so don't over order. The meals are authentically Argentine, well spiced and served with various dipping sauces. The general lack of customers in Zona Rosa means that you are likely to be taken care of too closely, but the waiters never give the impression that you are intended to finish the meal quickly.

Favorite Dish: I had the Argentine empanadas as an appetizer, which are served with a cup of broth. These were piping hot and well-spiced. For the entrée, I had a delicious parillada that included strips of tender beef, Argentine sausage, a salad and corn on the cob. All of it was excellent, especially when accompanied by garlic bread and the various hot sauces. Finally, a decent flan for dessert made it difficult for me to make it back to the hotel quickly.

Tre Fratelli is one of San Salvador's mainstays of Italian cuisine, but that doesn't mean that it is a memorable place to eat. The décor is minimally Italian, with the standard Salvadorean design of the building. The interior is dark without being romantic, in part due to the constant playing of sports on the various televisions around the room. The staff is friendly and helpful, but there really aren't all that many customers to be served. The food is not bad, but it's not good either, often lacking proper seasoning, with way too much salt to be either tasty or healthy.

Favorite Dish: I had the bocconcini salad, which did not contain bocconcini, but was drowned in enough balsamic vinegar to disinfect a major wound. The ravioli, stuffed with meat, were decent, despite a slathering of tomato sauce.

When my then-teenaged niece, a notoriously picky eater, came from the US to visit me in El Salvador for three weeks, one of my biggest concerns was figuring out how to feed her. If you, or anyone you plan to travel with, are similarly picky but love American-style fast food, fret not – San Salvador has just about everything you could hope to find. US chains McDonalds, Burger King, Wendy’s, KFC, Subway, Domino’s, Pizza Hut (especially Pizza Hut), and many others are all thick on the ground in San Salvador. Pollo Campero, home to good fried chicken, is something of a national obsession (even though the chain originated in neighboring Guatemala) and is definitely worth a visit. Biggest (that’s actually the name of the restaurant) is the local competition to the various international hamburger chains; personally, I never found their burgers too appetizing, but they offer a decent breakfast. Another local chain, Nash, offers pizza and fried chicken – something for everyone. My favorite local fast food chain – Mc de Servipronto, a rogue chain of counterfeit McDonalds restaurants born out of some sort of licensing dispute back in the 1980s –has unfortunately been forced out of business after decades of lawsuits. I always enjoyed going into the Mc de Servipronto that was located on Bulevar de los Héroes, ordering their feature sandwich, the Big Mmmm (their version of the Big Mac), and reading the anti-McDonalds propaganda posted on the walls.

During my time as a Peace Corps volunteer in El Salvador, I usually made the three-hour bus trip to San Salvador about once a month, sometimes for work-related meetings and sometimes just to meet up with friends and/or do a little shopping. Oftentimes, my last stop in San Salvador before heading to the bus terminal and then back to my Peace Corps site would by Pueblo Viejo, a restaurant located in what was once known as MetroSur and is not just another wing of the ever-expanding MetroCentro, reputedly Central America’s largest shopping mall. I’ve eaten dinner there a couple of times, and the food was good, but the time to visit Pueblo Viejo is definitely in the morning, when they have their all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet featuring just about every type of food that Salvadorans serve for breakfast, all excellently prepared and accompanied by coffee and a variety of fresh juices. At about $8 per person, it’s certainly an expensive breakfast by local standards, but I still always feel like those are $8 well spent. Indeed, this breakfast buffet makes Pueblo Viejo one of the three restaurants in San Salvador (along with El Sopón Típico and Inka Grill) that I always look forward to returning to during each trip back to El Salvador.

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Café Miranda is an old coffee farm, dating from the end of the 19th century, that has been open to public since 2001. There is a nice garden and restaurant and when the weather is good the panoramic view is supposed to be great. Unfortunately it was cloudy when we visited, but the pupusas were delicious. We had chocolate de cacao to drink and two different pupusas and it was all very good.
The restaurant is open on Wednesday - Thursday between 11.30 - 17, and on Friday - Sunday between 8 - 19.