Despite what is overheard on the news, parts of the country can seem overly Americanized. There are glossy shopping malls and fast food chains that cater to middle classes, many of whom have lived in the U.S. These were the things that were invested in when no one wanted to think of El Salvador, because for decades, there was only sadness. Now, they’re tired of sadness.

Roughly the size of Massachusetts, you can get anywhere in El Salvador within a few hours. There are volcanoes and cloud forests, mountain towns and a string of rural villages connected by wildflower speckled roads. There’s a Mayan village, Joya de Cerén, that was buried by an eruption like Pompeii, plus crater lakes and strange rock formations.

Not far away from Chepe Aleta is a nineteenth century pier, the only artisan fishing pier along El Salvador’s 126-mile long coast, at Puerto de la Libertad. Within the seafood market, everything is laid out in large metal buckets filled with ice. There is shrimp of every size, stout lobsters, and red snapper. Flat, whole snook and mackerel, dried on rocks in the sun, sit on tables, stacked like pieces of paper. Small red and blue land crabs are tied together by the handful. On the malecón just off the pier are dozens of small seafood restaurants with simple meals and cold beer. Places you could sit in all day without a care in the world and watch the the fishing boats come and go. In fact, many do this.

On the other side of the country is Suchitoto, with its white washed church and colonial cobblestone grid of streets in the mountains above Lago Suchitlán. It’s a town that nearly disappeared during the civil war, but today is filled with shops selling indigo, boutique hotels like Los Almendros de San Lorenzo, and outdoor restaurants where you can sit beneath the shade with a cup of horchata de morro, like Casa 1800.

In San Salvador, there are markets bustling with people. At the weekly farmer’s market at the Minsterio de Agricultura y Ganadería there are dozens of stands selling Salvadoran ingredients like freshwater fish, honey, and loroco, plus clay jars filled with atoll de elote, pupusas on the comal, and chicharrón being pulled out of bubbling vats of oil. The Mercado Central in the center sprawls out in every direction, selling not just foodstuffs, but clothes and electronics. In the Mercadito de Merliot, workers on their lunch break descend on the food stalls for ceviches, cócteles, and sopa de pata.

Then, there’s the coffee. The commodity’s booms and busts are woven into the fabric of the country for the last several hundred years. Despite a disease devastating the crop a few years ago, many growers are shifting to a more diverse collection of plants. Overdose Coffee Dealer, a small roaster in Santa Tecla, holds cuppings that include new wave coffees made from a hybrid called pacamarra, a local strain of caturra called paca, and old bourbon that survived in the shadows of the war.

Elsewhere in the city, young chefs are opening new concepts tailored to local products. El Mestizo, a new food hall in the World Trade Center complex, features nine original concepts, including La Cocina Central, with updated Salvadoran small plates. There’s Boca Boca, with comfort food and cocktails, and and Kwa, a pop-up from a chef that worked at Noma, Pujol, and Quintonil.

Still, wherever you go in El Salvador, there are pupusas. They were being made by the Pibil culture a few thousand years ago, then shaped like half moons and filled with things like squash blossoms, chipilín, and tenquique mushrooms, anf they’ll b around for thousands of years more. Until the 1960s, they were limited to a few central towns, but a series of military dictatorships, which brought on tragedies like La Matanza, when tens of thousands of indigenous people were slaughtered, displaced thousands and pushed pupusas to every corner of El Salvador and into Guatemala and Honduras. Later, the civil war brought them to the U.S. The hand formed tortilla patties – I like them best with chicharrón, melted quesillo, or loroco and topped with a spoonful of curtido – can be had on a sidewalk table in every part of the country. In Olocuilta, they make them with rice flour, while in Alegría they add plantains into the masa. You can have them for breakfast or a late night snack. They’ll come on the side of dish or they can be the main course. Passed by hand, hot and greasy, right from the cook to the diner. Pupusas are wonderful, though you already knew that.