Sam and I stopped on the way back from New York in Springfield, MA to get a bite to eat. Taking my queues from RoadFood.com, we stopped at Salsa’s Mexican Restaurant (yelp) (RoadFood) for a quick lunch.

I am sorry that I didn’t take any pictures of the food we got. I was too busy eating it. I am sorry that you weren’t there to enjoy the food with us because you missed out on a remarkable meal. I’m sorry we don’t all live in Springfield, so we can go eat here regularly and get happy and fat together. The food was just that damn good. It was some of the best cuicina that I have eaten in years… Probably since we stayed at Rancho Leonaro for my little sister’s wedding.

We had papusas of the pork+cheese and bean+cheese variety. They were accompanied by fried plantains, rice, beans and a cole slaw-type salad. This is NOT typical Tex-Mex food. The salad was unlike anything I had ever had – almost like coleslaw made from crema on a bed of lettuce topped with eye-watering fresh hot sauce. The beans were soup-like with lots of cilantro. The rice was well-cooked and medium grain and had a squeeze of lime, but no other flavorings. The fried plantains were made from firm and ripe plantains and weren’t starchy at all. The outsides were caramelized to perfection.

And papusas… Papusas are what quesadillas want to be when they grow up. Or what happens when you run a tamale over with a steamroller. Instead of flour tortillas, papusas are made with thinly rolled masa dough layered with fillings like meat, beans and cheese, and grilled until the middle is melted and the masa dough is cooked. These papusas were perfect. The cheese was both melted into the dough and meat/beans AND had spent just the right amount of time oozing out the sized and onto the griddle to get perfectly brown and crispy. The masa was moist and well-cooked. I’m not a very good food blogger, because I really don’t have the words to convey how terribly wonderful the whole experience was…