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Downtown café packs a punch with Latin fare

Join the regulars for a bite at Atlanta’s Buenos Dias Café.

Whether you’re looking for a comfy couch to enjoy a café con leche, a fresh fruit smoothie or a quick lunch with co-workers, Buenos Dias Café has your appetite covered.

Since 2012, Buenos Dias Café has welcomed customers coming off Decatur Street in downtown Atlanta. The café now boasts a crowd of repeat diners that have made the spot a lunch staple over the years.

11Alive's At the Table ATL sat down with the duo behind the delicious operation, Jeannette Flores-Katz and her husband Ken. The couple started the colorful spot initially focused on a small, focused menu rooted in Salvadoran specialties from Flores-Katz’s upbringing.

“My grandma used to bring fruits and vegetables to sell for the market,” Jeannette Flores-Katz said. “And I would get the little ones down the corner to make money to go buy pupusas.”

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The pupusa, a classic Salvadoran dish is now available at Buenos Dias Café under a wealth of variations. Whether traditional beans and cheese or chicken mole is more your style, a pupusa means treating your taste buds to a bit of culture at the same time.

“It’s part of El Salvador. It’s all over the place,” Flores-Katz said.

“How does this dish represent El Salvador?”

“Like pizza in New York, you can find at every corner? You go to El Salvador, there’s a pupuseria at every corner,” Flores-Katz said.

And it’s not just the street corners where you’ll find the favored meal.

“When the buses stops, there are ladies yelling “Pupusas!” selling on the buses as well,” she said.

But here’s a tip for your first pupusa: forget the fork.

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“It’s meant to be eaten just like pizza,” Flores-Katz said. “It’s not a knife and fork. If you go back and you eat with a knife and fork, and everybody says, ‘Uhhhhh … you forgot how to eat pupusas!’”

“How does this dish represent Atlanta?”

For Flores-Katz, the success of her Atlanta restaurant is centered in creativity, keeping customers happy and healthy and the ability to adapt.

“One of the things immigrants are judged on is what we bring. But in reality, most of us, we adapt to what America is. We bring a little bit of us, but we mix it with what other cultures have. And that’s what makes America,” Flores-Katz said. “I think food is the perfect thing that makes us get together.”

"We bring a little bit of us, but we mix it with what other cultures have. And that's what makes America. I think food is the perfect thing that makes us get together." This interview with...

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