Wednesday, October 12, 2011

La Arepa

La Arepa is a Venezuelan food cart located in the A La Carts food pavilion in Portland, Oregon (located near SE 50th and Division and SE 50th and Ivon).



Menu (as of late September 2011)

I arrived at the food pod around 11:45 a.m. on a Tuesday and saw virtually zero people at this pod. Seriously, all we needed was a few tumbleweeds to resemble a ghost town. Fortunately, that meant I would get my food much faster than if I went downtown.

I ordered their chicken arepa ($5): slowly cooked shredded chicken breast prepared with onion, garlic, sweet pepper, and paprika, all inside a corn cake. And yes, arepas are generally gluten free! Since there was no line when I got there, I got my order within a minute or so of ordering.

Chicken arepa (La Arepa)
Good flavors in the moist shredded chicken. The onions, garlic, sweet peppers, and paprika packed the poultry with flavors that put me in a happy place. The juices saturated the bottom corn cake, yet the arepa still maintained a lovely crunch. I wasn't necessarily blown away on flavor or appearance here, but I admit I erred here in not getting something more interesting. I could have added some hot sauce to the arepa to give it more dimension, but opted not to.

I would have liked the corn cake itself cooked on the flattop a bit more; get some more color on it to liven up the appearance. Next time, I'll try an arepa that has more than just meat inside it. In the meantime, I'd say this is a decent place to get your arepa fix. 6/10

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