caracas arepa bar (revisited) and ob-la-di, ob-le-a

last night marked, if not a fully triumphant then a certainly satisfying, return to caracas arepa bar.

by the time i met up with my friend, zovig, at around 6:30, it wasn’t searingly hot, but the humidity had not abated. i almost declined a cocktail because i couldn’t bear anything heavy. but at the last minute i opted for the the “michelada,” a beer cocktail (which is apparently a new trend).

caracas makes a spicy panela–essentially sugar cane juice that is boiled, evaporated and made into a hard disc or “cake.” they break off and crush about a tablespoon or two into a beer glass that’s lined with coarse salt. they give you a lemon slice and a bottle of beer. you pour. you enjoy. it’s a less aggressive tequila shot and  sort of perfect for summer (especially a summer monday) when the clime mandates something cold, fizzy. i had thought it should be sweeter, but the salt and spice keep it lively. it’s a good accompaniment for the weighty fare.

for our appetizer: yoyos. this might be the only truly wrong thing about the evening, from my perspective.
on the menu, yoyos are described as “fried sweet plantain balls, stuffed with white cheese.”
seems pretty straightforward, yes?

but yoyos are really fried plantain sliders: sweet brown bread, split, served with thin slices of sweet plantain and a bit of white cheese. and a sweet syrup on the side. it’s gooey, but disappointingly one-dimensional. actually, make that two-dimensional: sweet and heavy. no-no on the yoyos.

as to the arepa: i ordered la sureña – grilled chicken and chorizo, with avocado slices and “the classic and always enigmatic spicy chimi-churri sauce.” (i LOVE caracas and their menu, but they crack me up. i think “enigmatic” is not the word they’re looking for here, because there is nothing mysterious about the sauce. theirs is GARLIC GARLIC GARLIC.)

essentially, la sureña is a chicken club with avocado–to me, an irresistible combination of “good” and “bad” meats and fats. but part of what makes a good sandwich is the architecture– isn’t just the ingredients, it’s in the building and the balance of them. in this case, an excellent arepa is overstuffed (not a bad quality!) but the layers are lined up so you encounter the components singly: a bite of chorizo, another bite of (dry) chicken, chimi-churri on the left, avocado on the bottom. and maybe it was just the case last night, but my arepa needed liberal dousings of salt and/or mango sauce.

but then there is dessert.

there is a filipino treat called “turrones de casoy” — a wonderful cashew nougat that is wrapped in white rice paper. when i was a kid, we referred to it as “the stuff in the communion wrapper.” it seems most people still refer to it that way. the wrapper is bland vehicle for the sweet candy, but it keeps them from sticking together. (and it’s a fun novelty when you’re young.)  but the white rice paper that is used for turrones de casoy, and other spanish and italian sweets or nougats, has nothing on the obleas wafer. it really has a very similar texture and stiffness to the communion wafer.

i did a little research last night. the white rice paper is made from potato starch, water, vegetable oil; an oblea recipe will call for flour, water, milk and sugar. sounds like it should have some flavor,  but it’s less sweet and cookie-like than say, a pizzelle. it’s not unlike those thin wafer cookies, layered with creme (i actually like those–why can’t i rememeber any brand names?).

caracas’ oblea is as big and round as my face. that, my friends, is big and round. when our server handed it over (not on a plate, but in plain white paper),  it really did feel like…sunday morning. except that it was a sandwich. the thin layer of  delicious dulce de leche filling is actually too modest to be “sinfully” good, but it is a nice, proper way to end the meal.

and: thank you to zovig for the hand modeling.

all photos © anita aguilar