Arepas! Arepas!

 

What an amazing weekend we had! So much fun knocking off a few items on our list including a most amazing Venezuelan lunch.

It’s wasn’t in our plans to have a Venezuelan lunch when we headed out to explore our neighboring borough: Queens. But we happily tried Arepas Café  (www.arepascafe.com) for lunch when we stumbled upon this tiny restaurant while walking on 36th Ave in Astoria.

We were seated in the window and decided we would each have a Polar, a Venezuelan beer; mini Empanadaz as our antojitos (appetizer); and enjoy the obvious for lunch: arepas. But what type of apepas? Wait, what is an arepas?

Arepas is described as a “corn based dish (wheat free) perfect for standing for bread, highly nutritional meal, split in half and filled with cheese, deli meats, great variety of fillings, and dressed with toppings.

Basically it looks like a pita filled with whatever you want. There were so many versions to choose from! Do we want beef? Chicken? Shark? Um, sorry, no to Jaws, thank you. In the end we went with the arepas that had an asterisk next to it on the menu indicating a ‘chef suggestion’ and sounded yummy. I decided on the Mami: Venezuelan Roast Pork, avocado and white cheese, and my husband got the Arepa Pabellon: shredded beef, black bean, fried sweet plantains, sprinkled with white cheese.

The beer and appetizer came first. The beer was light and refreshing and the empanadas were ‘mini’ as described filled with beef, cheese and chicken, but was a little more doughy then we were used to, but very good.

Soon our arepas came and they were delicious. Packed with meat and filled with flavor, arepas is now on the list of a favorite food! Wow, really good and the perfect portion for a noon-time meal. You should most definitely try this Venezuelan delight. Yum!