Pupuseria Doña Azucena

I’ve been coming here for years. The food is excellent. I would recommend you call in your order at least 25 minutes ahead of time. Otherwise the food will take forever. Services does suck though. Pick up an order and avoid the hassle.

The food is great!!! Very cheap and good quality. The service sucks!!! SUCKS! SUCKS!!! The manager sucks!!! Too… The manager is a slim older men with a huge mole on his face. His not educated to do his job well, nor he understand that clients are their biggest asset.
Want to have a good experience do the following
1) smile and make sure you REPEAT! REPEAT AND REPEAT THE ORDER.
2) make sure you order with the exact words in the menu otherwise they will mess it up.
3) DO NOT EXPECT GOOD SERVICE. DO NOT EXPECT TO EAT ALL AT THE SAME TIME, food comes at different times. So if your waiting for your bread but you have your eggs already, well you will keep waiting. And don’t bother the manager, he won’t do shit… Yeah is bad. But the food! The food is good if your lucky to get it all right.

Family favorite, good, authentic El Salvadiran cuisine. The pupusas and chicharron y yucca are delicious.

Slow service, rude staff, wrong on most of our order. To top it all off, the name on our recipt: Gringo. Jeez guys, come on! Waiting for the bathroom I watched a kitchen staff member walk out with dripping wet hands because there were no paper towels. We won’t be back.

Pupusas are good is Dona Bessi not azucena
Not tenian empadas ni tamal de elote ESE sabado q fuimos :(meseras not muy atentas

The food is good, the service sucks. They’re not very attentive with their customers so service is slow. I recommend the pupusas with cheese and pork and also the pork with yuca.

The food is cheap but man does it come at a price! How do you mess up a simple order of 4 pork & cheese pupusas & a pastelito? They sent it to the wrong table (who came after us) & be mindful there was only two other tables occupied. The place was empty & the waiter never apologized. We got our food in portions smh. Honestly the one in Arlington is much better no matter how full they get they are attentive to detail! Never again will I be coming back to this location.

I have been to Dona Bessy’s several times. I really love their pupusas, however their service is horrible. Every experience I have had here has taken well over an hour. I understand that the pupusas are freshly prepared — however it takes FOREVER for anyone to take your order, bring your food out when it’s ready, or even to bring the check! If you order water it comes in a small styrofoam cup — and never gets refilled. Also, the one time we tried to split checks (I even told her how much to run on each card) it was incomprehensible to the waitress!
I truly love their pupusas, but the service keeps me from going back!

This place has great authentic food and the prices are cheap so it won’t cost you an arm and leg to eat some amazing pupusas
The rating was low because of the horrible customer service. Every time I go here I have to assume it’s going to take for ever to get my food. They have 2 waitress on a busy weekend for every table.
I also placed an order over the phone on a different occasion, and when I got there no one had a clue where my order was. One lady even said «I remember him calling but I don’t know what happened to the order». They need more staff asap specially on the weekends.

Horrible nasty food it tastes old and discusting especially the salad

They have some really wild shit here like live crustaceans milling about in the main area. I like going down the isles and picking up items not knowing what in gods name they are and surprising myself when I get around to eating it. I’m guaranteed to be the whitest person there at any given visit, but this… this is living, baby.

Slow service. Asked for sour cream and tomatoes with my meal. Didn’t get with my meal. After asking for the third time, we’ll into my meal it came. Papoosa taste gummy. Would not return. I like to give them 3 stars but feel it would be misleading.

Best place to get pupusas, the food is very authentic and cheep, BTW if your a vegetarian this is the spot to get good food!

I went to this place because of the rave reviews, well to start now its called Bessy or something like that. Went it, completely casual rest. The menu has maybe 10 items in it. I love pupusas so I really wanted to try them here. I was in for a treat. Pupusas were greasy and tasted awful, I was so dissapointed. I order some fried pork, it was just hard tasteless fat. I really tried but Im never again going there and I don’t recommend it.

Since we’ve had considerable pupusas from Doña Azucena’s other location — and they were always good, we were happy to see her open up a storefront here in Springfield. Unfortunately, for some unknown reason, the pupusas are nothing like the others, the quality of the place overall (although clean and neat) lacks the service punch, quality service and tasty goodness of the foods in general. I continue to give la Doña a 5 star rating elsewhere — but she needs a vast improvement at this location for me to return. For now, it’s not worth the trip.

We had gone to Gamsalot, the Korean restaurant right next door, which I was not really pleased with. I saw this place, and so we came back the next day in the late morning for an early lunch. Was pleasantly surprised. I had cravings for pupusas and tamales after watching Guy Fieri’s show on Food Network that showcased the Tortilla Café on Capitol Hill. Forget Capitol Hill, where you have to drive in traffic to D.C., look for street parking, and probably pay for it. This place is my new go to place for pupusas! Only 10 minutes from my home in Van Dorn. We will probably come here once a week or every other week.
This place is unbelievably cheap. The pupusas are good. Tamales good also. My husband liked his marinated steak with rice and salad for $ 9. When I was a grad student 15 years ago living in D.C. I used to eat pupusas every week, which we bought from some place on 11^th street. Now I am so happy to have found this new place. I only love the cheese pupusas. These were a bit liquidy, if that’s the word, but I couldn’t finish one after stuffing my face with 2 tamales and 2 pupusas. The one I brought home tasted so much better after it hardened and I miked it in the microwave for 30 seconds. So good. I love this place. I will be coming here every month. This place is so friggin cheap! We spent $ 20 on 3 pupusas, 2 tamales, a steak platter, 2 drinks, and the complementary cabbage. On the other hand, we spent $ 40 on the bolgogi and 2 bibimaps next door at Gamsalot, and I was not full or satisfied with that meal and later gorged on cookies and lychees I bought from the huge Asian supermarket nearby.
This place beats McDonald’s in taste and value any time. This will be our new junk food/​semi-​fast food place from now on. So glad I found this place. My husband was so excited and raving non-​stop at the restaurant that I was embarrassed. After the horrible papusas from El Paraiso in Van Dorn, I gladly give this place 5 stars. I didn’t really like the hot chocolate. It was very watery. I have had hot chocolate in Spain, which is very thick and good compared to this.

we did a carry out order, and obviously food doesnt taste the same when its being traveled in containers. the pupusas were cheap. but seemed a bit plain, and a bit soggy. it was hard to order because their english was so bad. luckily we had someone who is fluent. we also ordered some fried pork dish. i thought the pork was a bit over cooked. and i love plantains, and they were yummy but it was like $ 3 for 5 pieces. a bit over priced if you ask me. over all, solid pusasas. i recommend eating there.

2.5
Grub was good and cheap. It’s a buck fifty for a papusa! Holy cow. I liked my pupusas, fried plantains, and fried yuca. Just wish the papusas had a slight crunch to the dough and that they didn’t stack my six papusas. The steam and heat from one another made them soft borderline soggy.
They gave us plenty of the cabbage mix and sauce that accompanied the papusas.
Service is tough to come by since they usually are short and have 2 waitresses running the whole place. Consider yourself lucky if you are served the correct order.

I really like their pupusas and hot chocolate. Is always fresh.
Do not expect 2 much from the service. Very slow.

Ah, pupusas. I only came here for pupusas.
Dona Azucena does it right in many ways. I had 2 of the CHEESE PUPUSAS. The tortilla was soft with a slight crunch, and the curtido (cabbage relish), was fantastic. You get the mix of textures and the great flavors.
But I have an issue. The cheese. I like cheese as much as the next person, but my 2 pupusas probably had 50% more cheese than was necessary. If they cut out a bit, I’d like them more.
I also had a side of YUCCA which was crisp outside and tender inside. For drinks, I had a Fanta (hello!) and shared a HORCHATA, which I’ve always heard about but never tried. Yum. If you have the chance, try it. It’s made of lots of seeds, rice, barley, etc. The first thing that I could recognize was definitely a ricey taste, in the best way.
To top it all off, this whole feast cost us just over $ 30 for 4 of us, which included drinks, 2 tamales (which I didn’t eat), and an order of chicharonnes (which I also didn’t eat). Like I said, I came here for pupusas. Take the chance and try one if you’ve never had one. It’ll only set you back less than $ 2, after all. Next time I stop in, I’ll just let them know to give me a little less queso!

Compared to the one in Arlington, this place is much better and seemed a lot cleaner. Just ordered a few pasteles to take home and they were alright. They didn’t have empanadas or saltenas at the time and I didn’t have time to wait for them to make some.
Not sure how long it’s been around but I think it’s been there for a while. I’m surprised this is an FTR.