In the Mission, where boys and girls doing their best Mick Jagger wait 70 minutes for poached shrubbery over free-range champagne, Red’s is a haven of breakfast normalcy. Bacon. Eggs. Toast. Hash browns. Bad coffee. When I see a hipster doofus like me at the counter, I get genuinely pissed. “Back off!” I whisper under my breath while starring into my iPhone. “Our kind will be the ruin of this place.”

What most people don’t know is that Red’s moonlights as a damn good pupuseria. This is likely due to the fact that they’re not on the menu. Only a faded whiteboard behind the register lists the pupusa options available after 3:30pm, one of which caught my eye immediately: Crazy–$4.99. No ingredients. No reasoning why it costs more than double the average pupusa. Just Crazy.

Before I get into this pupusa, I should probably do the full disclosure thing and say that I’m a regular at Red’s. For breakfast, I mix it up between bacon and eggs, corned beef hash and pancakes. But at night, I exclusively get Crazy for pick-up. My guy there takes the order, yells “CRAZZZZY” back into the phone and hangs up. Doesn’t tell me how long or ask my name, though I suspect this is because no one else orders it.

Right, back to the pupusa. Last Monday night I was about to watch Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey when a strong hunger struck. I called my guy at Red’s and was greeted at their door 10 minutes later with handshakes and big smiles from the staff. They always make me feel like Gavin Newsom. Pretty rad.

Back home I unloaded the contents of the plastic bag, which weighed the exact amount as a cinder block. Zip locks filled with homemade sauce and fresh cut curtido, plastic cutlery and of course Crazy. (As a public service, I should note that this is not a beginner’s pupusa. It’d be like handing a second grader a recorder and the sheet music to “November Rain”. You’re just not ready.)

I started up 2001, which probably has one of the greatest opening sequences in the history of film. For those unfamiliar, take a minute and watch it. The music will ring a bell instantly, as it has been repurposed countless times when anything great or inspiration is about to happen. Extra points if you recognized it as the theme music for wrestling legend Ric Flair.

Anyways, this epic scene is playing as I open the to-go container and my world turns to slow motion. Crazy is big on an infinite universe scale. Denser and more commanding than a black hole, it would simply absorb any pupusa that dared drift into its gravitational pull. The otherworldly surface is perfectly crisped with bits of cheese oozing from craters in the bulbous center. I suspect they use a welding torch to seal the edges together. It’s disarmingly beautiful.

It was time to stop starring into the void and explore the great unknown. I covered this flying saucer in curtido, dribbled some sauce around and took a bite. In an instant I was blasted into the cosmos, racing at great speeds across vast distances. I zoomed past an asteroid belt of ingredients. There was zucchini and pork and beans and probably some other shit but I’d never know since it’s just called Crazy. It was phenomenal. It was powerful. It was too much.

I tried to slow things down but Crazy had turned into HAL 9000, taking complete command of the ship.

Like Dave, I needed to stop the madness. I floated to the motherboard, grabbed my fork, and, with my last ounce of energy, drove it through Crazy. The lights dimmed. My body was covered in sweat. I closed my eyes and began to weep. It was over. It was over. It was over.

The Dios Mios ranking will match the number of lightyears Crazy takes off your life:

I’m typically not one to boast, but I do my fair share of auto maintenance. Brake light replacement. Fluid upkeep. Full wax jobs. It helps keep hair on my back.

Last Saturday I woke with the Taurus on my mind. She was about 10,000 miles overdue for a new air filter and I needed to end the negligence. So I brushed my teeth, put on jogging pants, and walked to Pep Boys.

On my route was El Zocalo, a veteran of the San Francisco pupuseria circuit with solid street cred. Despite it being 10AM, I decided to put my air filter business on hold and get my taste buds wailed upon. A portly waiter greeted me with complimentary chips and salsa—a nice touch. Problem is the salsa was hot. I estimated it to be the exact temperature of human blood—98.6 degrees—and just as appetizing.

Wanting enough food to hold me over until dinner, I ordered the Plato Tipico—two pupusas, a Salvadorian enchilada, and a mystery item called pastelito. Now if this is a “typical plate” for Salvadorians, I image the entire nation is motionless for hours after meals. Not like the sexy Spanish siesta. I’m talking Class-A drug overdose. The jukebox kicked on and my plate dropped. It was time to bailar.

First up was the Salvadorian enchilada, which is a bit of a misnomer since it is essentially a tostada. The extraordinarily tender carnitas played nice with curtido, grated cheese, and hard-boiled egg for a pleasurable crunchy experience. Made me forget about the blood salsa.

Next I took on the duet of pupusas, one loroco y queso and the other chicharron (fried minced pork). They were solid. And I don’t mean solid like “Solid jam, brotha man!”.  I mean solid like the earth’s crust. Dry. Dusty. Heavy. I half expected to chip a tooth on a dinosaur bone. Atop the pupusas was curtido that tasted like it had been pickling since the Jurassic Period. Somehow I managed to eat more than half of each.

I turned my sluggish fork towards the pastelito, which I could best describe as an egg roll batter bomb packed with potato, pork and peppers. I wish I could tell you how it tasted. I really do. But after two bites my eyes blurred and I started mumbling to myself.

The next thing I know I’m stumbling down Mission Street using a piece of cardboard to shield my eyes from the harsh sunlight. Maybe I paid the bill. Maybe I didn’t. I’m pretty sure I lost a shoe. All I knew for sure is that I wanted to pass out in the gutter and bark at the beautiful people.

If you’ve ever wondered if a plate of food can turn you into a homeless person, the answer is yes. I had aspirations before El Zocalo. I was going to change my air filter. Do laundry. Smile. Live. Instead I spent the day collecting cans and urinating in a pickle jar. My rating matches the number of times someone looked me in the eyes on my walk home:

1 out of 4 Dios Mios:

2893 Mission Street, San Francisco CA

Elsy’s doesn’t have it easy. They share a wall with La Taqueria, one of the city’s most celebrated eateries. Christmas decorations hang above the door, meaning either their employees are all very short (sad) or they can’t afford a step ladder (sadder). And they specialize in pupusas, the Jan Brady of Latin American cuisine.

But check your pity at the door, because Elsy’s will knock your socks off. Now I didn’t grow up in El Salvador. And neither did my grandma. But I can imagine that if she did, these pupusas would be exactly like the ones she made.

Freshly pounded masa de maiz served as the exoskeleton for my order of revueltas (pork, cheese, beans) and loroco y queso (a flowering bud from Central America—thanks Wikipedia). While pupusas can get soggy in the middle, Elsy’s were perfectly crisped. The revueltas achieved a balance of ingredients that must have taken generations to master. It lasted no more than 48 seconds on my plate. The loroco y queso was essentially a cheese stick reincarnated in pancake form. I had a couple of scares where the cheese made a break for my esophagus. Nearly choked to death. But it was worth the risk.

Price is never a concern in pupuserias. My bottle of Coca Cola cost almost as much as the meal. What can make or break a pupusa are the accoutrements. Elsy’s curtido (pickled cabbage salad) was superb, bringing a welcomed vinegar crunch to the cheesy oblivion. And the salsa was, hmmm, convenient? It came in a squeeze bottle. Not much else to say. I’ve found pupuseria salsa to be the same from one place to the next. Red. Mild. Runny. Yet somehow absolutely necessary on each bite.

Upon finishing my plate, I passed out and slipped into a vivid dream state. I was back in my non-existent Salvadorian childhood at la casa de mi abuela. She was, as always, making pupusas in the kitchen. I sat at her feet and listened to stories of bloody revolutions, aching heartbreaks, and jaguars. A rooster crowed and I awoke with the rating:

3.5 out of 4 Dios Mios