More than 80 chefs assembled at the corner of Third Street and Pennsylvania Avenue Northeast with one goal in mind: break the Guinness World Record for biggest pupusa.
After four and a half hours, the chefs succeeded, with a 20 foot, 2 inch prize to show for it.
The dedicated group of chefs looking to break the record for the world’s biggest pupusa gathered for the Fiesta D.C. Festival, an annual celebration of Latin heritage in D.C.
Karina Coray, a friend of the event’s organizers, said the El Salvadoran community in the city is extremely tight-knit. Most of the chefs on the team were from local El Salvadoran restaurants, or the former world record-holding team, which created an 18-foot pupusa in 2022 in Olocuilta, El Salvador.
One of the chefs involved with the project, Juan Blanco, owns several restaurants in the area and has spent 26 years producing pupusas.
Blanco explained the world record pupusa was made with 400 pounds of a corn based dough referred to as masa, 200 pounds of cheese, 80 pounds of a traditional pork filling called chicharron and 50 pounds of an edible Salvadoran flower named loroco.
Those ingredients were assembled to build roughly 200 individual sections of pupusa, which were carefully united together in the pan, to meet the length requirement.
After assembling the full pupusa, the griddle was connected to several propane tanks and a matching lid covered with hot coals and heated by flamethrowers. The lid was then placed on top of the pupusa by way of a fork lift and several chefs guiding it into place.
The lid was used to cook the pupusa on both sides at once because the dish was simply too large to flip.
Maria Arango, a local Guatemalan American who heard about the event on social media and came exclusively to see the world record attempt, was less than confident in the attempt.
“I hope so but I don’t really understand how they’re gonna do it,” Arango said.
Edwin Hernandez, another D.C. resident, having more confidence in the chefs, responded simply, “Hell yeah!”
After 45 minutes on the griddle, the audience held its breath as the top was removed and the Guinness World Records representative carefully measured the freshly cooked pupusa.
Moments passed as the representative walked the full circumference of the griddle cake, before walking to his bag, removing a Guinness World Records certificate, and hoisting it high above his head, nodding, as the DJ’s voice boomed “Pupusa más grande!” to the cheers of the crowd.
The event brought representation and visibility to a large swath of the D.C. population.
“Obviously the United States is a melting pot, a bunch of different diversities here, it’s always nice to hear that where you’re from has a lot of people out there you can relate to,” Hernandez said.
Arango said she felt energized, getting to experience Latin culture and seeing so many others experience it as well, some for the very first time.
“The perfect place to be on a Saturday” was how Martine Molina, an event attendee, described the event while wearing a “Pupusa Power” T-shirt. Molina married into the El Salvadoran community and heard about the record-breaking attempt through his family. Molina said how it was “so much fun” to connect with the community at the event.
The slice was made sweeter having spent hours baking in the sun, the community and the excitement over a dish so emblematic of the District.
As Blanco put it, “[Pupusas] that’s our everyday food.”
This article was edited by Maria Tedesco, Marina Zaczkiewicz and Abigail Turner. Copy editing done by Luna Jinks and Emma Brown.
