La Surena – Grilled Chicken, hearty chorizo with avocado slices and spicy chimi-churri sauce

What is an Arepa, you ask? You didn’t ask? What, am I talking to myself? I am? Ok, let’s move on.

I had never had nor heard of an Arepa before I moved to NYC.

An Arepa (should I be capitalizing this??) is a Venezuelan (or Colombian) cornmeal flatbread, split and made into sandwiches. Similar to a Mexican Gordita or a Salvadoran Pupusa.

If this were part of a graded school paper, I would totally get an F right now for blatant Wikipedia plagiarism.

Caracas Arepas bar has four locations, but today we visited the quite popular, cozy little East Village locale to try our first Arepa.

The place is dark and cramped but service is friendly and prompt. There are about a dozen varieties of Arepas to choose from.

Here’s my take. I LOVED the filling of each one. Especially the Da Pabellon with it’s moist and flavorful shredded beef, black beans, cheese and plantains. SO GOOD!

And the La Surena, with chicken, chorizo, avocado and chimi-churri sauce was also quite nice.

The Arepa itself, I’m not so crazy about. It’s tough to bite through. It’s not super flavorful. It was like a really stale pupupsa. It was just a boring vehicle for the wonderful ingredients.

They’re also on the smaller side. This was perfect for our appetites this particular evening. But you should probably also order an appetizer if you’re hungry.

Also, if you have false teeth or veneers, watch out when you bite into them. You might be eating a $2500 Arepa, if you bite into a particularly hard one.

93 1/2 E 7th St
New York, NY 10009
East Village
(212) 529-2314
caracasarepabar.com

De Pabellon – Shredded Beef, black beans, white cheese and sweet plantains