Popoca

Popoca means to emit smoke in Nawat, an indigenous language of El Salvador, and Anthony Salguero cooks nearly everything over wood.6

Why go

Salguero nixtamalizes his corn with wood ash, mills it himself and shapes the masa by hand before it goes onto the comal.6 The corn comes from Tamoa, a Mexican fair-trade company, and he works it into a masa that is fluffier, crumblier and wetter than tortilla masa; he has run blue corn through it looking for the texture he wants.5 Soleil Ho, then the Chronicle's restaurant critic, wrote up the result in 2020, when the room was still a residency in Uptown: They're slightly crumbly, as if you could pick up the faint signature of every individual corn kernel that gave its nascent life for the dish. She went on: Their outsides have a robust whiff of smoke and are caramelized from the griddles; the insides steamy and soft.5 Salguero was born in San Francisco to a Salvadoran father and a Puerto Rican mother, and cooked at Saison and Commonwealth before he went back to this food.5

Cesar Hernandez did not like this room at first. He had reviewed the popup and expected more of it: But I confess: When I visited Popoca's new Oakland restaurant last year, I didn't think it was living up to its potential. By September 2024 he had it as the first full-service restaurant of California's Salvadoran wave and Bon Appétit had put it seventeenth among the best new restaurants in the country.1 3

Order this / avoid

Order: pupusas, and take at least one off the vegetable list. Black bean and cheese is the classic; the seasonal ones have run to jalapeño, Jimmy Nardello peppers and parsley. There is a shrimp one and a braised beef one too.5
Order: the gallo en chicha, chicken with dates and potatoes braised in sweet-sour fermented pineapple juice. Salguero grew up hearing about it and did not eat one until he went to El Salvador.5 6
Order: the guaca-mol, $17 in 2024. Mashed avocado under smoked, cured egg yolk, with two thick Salvadoran tortillas brushed in asiento, the pork lard left over from making chicharron. Hernandez says he avoids recommending guacamole and made an exception for this one.1 4
Order: the pescado en alguashte, $47 in 2024, and it is the dish Hernandez calls the piece de resistance: wood-grilled branzino on a pumpkin-seed sauce Salguero builds from smoked fish carcasses, jalapeños, whole pepitas, cilantro and annatto.1
Order: the estilo Popoca set, $68 in 2024, if you want the whole menu: appetizers, pupusas, an entree and dessert to share.1
Drink: El Humo, an old fashioned smoked and seasoned with relajo, the Salvadoran seed and spice blend. Eduardo Ed Peraza Flores runs the bar.1
Order: the chicken wings, craggy and drizzled with a chile-laced syrup.4
Avoid: eating a pupusa bare. Salguero's rule is curtido with every bite, and his own method is to halve it, open it like a pita pocket and load it.6

What locals & experts say

MacKenzie Chung Fegan and Cesar Hernandez put it sixth in the Chronicle's 2026 Top 100: Popoca is California's crown jewel for Salvadoran cooking, not only for its high-caliber pupusas but for the way it widens diners' perspectives of the cuisine.4
Anthony Salguero, to Mario Cortez in the Chronicle, on what he will not modernize: Those dishes I don't want to steer too far away from what they are, because they're amazing as they are. He named grilled chorizos, bistec encebollado and tamales pisques.5
Elazar Sontag, Bon Appétit, 2024, on what comes to the table: They arrive at the table molten hot, oozing salty cheese, and tasting of smoke and sweet corn. It's tempting to order another before you've finished the first.3
The MICHELIN inspectors use Salguero's own term for what he cooks, progressive Salvadoran, and single out the wings: extra-crunchy campero chicken with house hot sauce and vegetable escabeche.2

Good to know

The room is at 906 Washington Street in Old Oakland. It started as a pop-up in 2019 at Classic Cars West in Uptown.5
The vegetarian pupusas carry the seasonal fillings, which come off the market. Summer 2024 ran to charred Jimmy Nardello peppers, chicken skin with squash, and salt cod with alliums and lemon zest, and the cheese is a blend of queso Oaxaca and Monterey.1
Lengua and loroco are on the filling list too, loroco being the earthy flower bud of a Central American vine.2
The kitchen is dark Monday and Sunday, and the guide lists a later Friday and Saturday close.2

Verdict

must-visit — Order pupusas and one thing you have never heard of, and put curtido on every bite. Salguero runs the whole corn process himself over fire, and the Chronicle's critics rate him sixth in the Bay for it.