For a small restaurant, Evelin’s takes you around the world.

It’s hard not to come away from Evelin’s Restaurant pleasantly… well, confused might be the right word.

The family-run storefront is part pupuseria, with a lineup of Salvadoran pastries stuffed with loroco, calabaza, frijoles and more. Yet there’s an Asian flair – egg rolls and salmon teriyaki – as well as pasta, a burger and housemade chips and salsa.

It’s fair to ask why the mashup of unrelated cuisines.

“If you don’t want pasta, we can do a burger; if you don’t want a burger, we have pupusas,” explains Carlos Carcamo, a son of the owners who works the front of the house. In other words, “why not?”

In many ways, the menu was born from Marina’s diversity. With so many culinary cultures sharing one space, a small but far-reaching menu makes sense.

So the initial confusion fades, replaced by an equally pleasant realization. It comes when you hear the rhythmic slapping of dough by hand for the pupusas. That’s mom – Evelin Carcamo – in the kitchen preparing the pockets from scratch. The pasta for their chicken alfredo is also made in house. And the beef for the burgers patty is grass-fed.

“My mom does everything homemade,” Carcamo points out. Thickly julienned twigs of carrot and green onion fill the spring rolls, yielding to the crackling shell and its warm, nutty sweetness. Hand-cut tortilla chips are thick and crispy, sparked by a deft scattering of salt. But if Evelin’s has a center, it’s found in the pupusas.

The pork, beans and cheese trinity in the revuelta pupusa combines into a florid earthiness teetering between sanguine and faintly sweet. It becomes a playground for the curtido – the slaw’s fresh snap brightens the dish. Rustic yet clever, the revuelta is what you want in a neatly prepared pupusa. The loroco version, however, is pure delight.

Grassy and mellow with a hint of trampled hay and chalky soil, the combination of flower buds and cheese captivates you in the way that a meadow path draws you along its trail. A tart trill from the filling catches the attention of the curtido, bringing a bright glow to each bite.

It’s still a homespun pupusa – nothing out of the ordinary except in the care taken with ingredients.

Carcamo says the family’s loose “why not?” approach also applies to the burger, as in “they put pineapple on pizza, why not put pineapple on a burger?” Some might argue the former – the tropical fruit on pizza is about as controversial as things get in culinary annals. But this presentation features meat rather than fruit, a thick patty striding across the palate with a husky zeal, kicking up a grassy, earthy minerality and trailing light wafts of smoke. The thinly-sliced and grilled pineapple acts like a tropical breeze – a respite from the swarthy meat.

At times the kitchen’s reach exceeds its grasp. A piccata (yes, they did) special one Saturday featured creamy chicken and a modest sauce. The mashed potatoes, however, were wan and runny.

Still, Evelin’s has a feel for the casual and eclectic, an arrangement that eludes many restaurants.

EVELIN’S RESTAURANT 250 Reservation Road #B, Marina. 11am-9pm daily. 641-7514.