By SHELLY GARCIA

Staff Reporter

Got a hankering for pupusa? loroco? Or costilla para sopa?

Salvadoran supermarket chain La Tapachulteca is finding a ready market of immigrants willing to pay a premium price for brands and products native to their homeland.

The privately held company owned by the Torres family with 36 stores in El Salvador opened its first U.S. market at 1500 South Vermont St. in L.A. about three years ago, and, in May will open its second unit in Van Nuys.

La Tapachulteca, a cross between Wal-Mart and Lucky’s, sells groceries, meats, vegetables, handcrafts, gift items, clothing, health and beauty aids, novelties and even machetes, with one common theme: The goods are native to El Salvador, even if they don’t actually come from the small Central American country.

La Tapachulteca sells all of the traditional native dishes: pupusa, a tortilla filled with ground pork and a Salvadoran vegetable called loroco, and costilla para sopa, a special cut of meat used in soups, among them. But there are also shampoos, clothing and other items, that, while not substantially different from the merchandise found here, bear familiar brand names sought after by those who miss their homeland. “Some people are so traditional, they prefer the brands there,” said Wilfredo Reyes, general manager of the South Vermont store.

The Torres family, which owns a number of corporations in El Salvador as well as the country’s major league soccer team, Sirpo, brought its market chain to the U.S. to capitalize on the large population of immigrants that arrived here during the civil wars in the 1980s. But what they did not foresee was the way in which the population scattered across the city.

“We based our initial expectations on the high amount of Salvadorans in L.A., but the community is so spread out, it’s very hard to cover it all with just one location,” Reyes said. “That’s why we’re planning to grow this year with one or two more stores.”