The Mango Lassie

“What is an arepa?” So asks the rhetorical question on the website of Caracas Arepa Bar. If you click on the link you learn they are “dense, yet-spongy corn flour rounds,” “pita-like pockets” “cake-swaddled melange” and “like a Latin Sloppy Joe,” among many other descriptors. But, as I found out recently the best way to really understand what they are is to try them yourself. I met up with my friend Onion there a few weeks ago to do that.

I learned about the restaurant from Sweet Tea, one of my colleagues, who is Venezuelan-American. I asked her if there are any good Venezuelan restaurants in New York City. She didn’t know of many, she said, but there was one great one I had to try. That place was Caracas Arepa Bar, which has outposts in Manhattan’s East Village and in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

The Manhattan location is small and nearly always crowded, there happened to be a table for two waiting for us when we arrived. (It was also pretty dark inside, hence the poor quality of my photos.) Onion and I scanned the menu of arepas and liked the looks of too many of them to narrow it down. So we ordered, a curiara (Spanish word used in Venezuela for “dugout canoe”) filled with three varieties. The one we ordered, called La Popular, included two halves each of: La De Pabellón, with shredded beef, black beans, white salty cheese and sweet plantains; La Reina Pepiada, with chunky chicken and avocado mix salad; and La Mulata, with grilled white cheese with jalapeños, sautéed red peppers, fried sweet plantains and black beans.

Our server convinced us we needed an appetizer too, so we ordered tequeños—little fried dough sticks filled with melted, stretchy cheese. Those came with a slightly spicy dipping sauce, and they were satisfying (if a little too bland) in the guilty way jalapeño poppers and cheese fries can be, especially when eaten between swigs from our bottles of Negra Modelo.

As it turned out, we probably didn’t need an appetizer. Our arepas arrived in a wooden serving dish that was indeed reminiscent of a dugout canoe, but this one probably would have sunk to the bottom of the river because it was so filled with food. The arepas were chewy corn pockets that made for easy finger food. The only problem with this kind of finger food is once you start eating one, you can’t put it down for fear of it falling apart completely. Instead, I end up eating everything a bit too quickly.

My favorite arepa was the beef one. The salty cheese was like the crumbly Mexican cheese cotija, and it accented the slightly sweet beef and the plantains nicely. The chicken one was my least favorite; the meat was a little dry and the avocado lacked kick to counterbalance its fatty richness. (I added some of that hot sauce I’d put on the tequeños for some extra flavor.) The cheese and jalapeño one was more interesting, having great texture, heat and sweetness.

All-in-all, three halves of an arepa amounts to plenty of food for one person and enough variety to keep even the most indecisive eaters happy. If you still don’t know what an arepa is after reading this post, I suggest you go out and try one yourself.

Caracas Arepa Bar
93 1/2 E. 7th St.
New York, NY 10009
212.529.2314