Jose Rodriguez felt the usual pangs of the foreign-exchange student when he arrived in tiny Decatur, Michigan, for a year of high school a decade ago. The little town just southeast of Kalamazoo offered enough opportunities for trying exotic foods like pasta and burgers. But there were no arepas, the fat, griddled corn cakes he’d eaten nearly every day for most of his life.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
There’s debate over where arepas come from—Venezuela, Rodriguez’s home, and Colombia are the prime contenders—but though there are regional differences, you can find similar things all over Latin America (e.g., El Salvador’s pupusas or Mexico’s gorditas). Pudgy patties hand-formed from dough made of cornmeal, water, and salt, they’re eaten solo, plain and unadorned, or as accompaniment to other foods. Split open and stuffed with whatever’s on hand, they become arepas rellenas.
Rodriguez’s mother, Luzmila, flew up to school the staff on her recipes—including fillings for arepa rellenas and empanadas as well as other little bites like tostones, fried yuca, and boliquesos, lightly sweet balls of deep-fried cornmeal dough, similar to hush puppies but with interiors of partly molten Venezuelan queso fresco and semiduro, a mild, medium-hard cheese. A handful of main plates and juices—including the tooth-cracking papelon con limon, made from sweet lime and piloncillo, a dark brown unrefined sugar—round out the menu.
“It’s almost a midwestern mentality: you know, your eyes are bigger than your stomach,” says Rodriguez. “Some people don’t realize sometimes you get full with just one arepa.”
