This past weekend, my wife and I took a needed break from the kids and spent the day in the city by ourselves. We decided to head downtown and grab some lunch at Caracas - an arepa bar/restaurant in the East Village. This place was featured on Throwdown with Bobby Flay on the Food Network and remains one of two places on that show that I've eaten from (the other being Donut Plant). We love this place but hadn't been there in a couple of years. We had no idea that they had opened a second, larger (although still tiny) place a couple of doors down the street. We decided to start with some Yoyos - which are fried sweet plantain balls stuffed withwhite cheese (mmmm...). Then we moved on to the arepas. We both had de pabellón which is filled with shredded beef, black beans, white salty cheese and sweet plantains (probably the best of the bunch). Next, I had la de pernil filled with roasted pork shoulder, tomato slices and spicy mango sauce. Finally, I had a breakfast arepa (mainly because I had never had one before and wanted to try one) filled with eggs, onions, peppers and chorizo. Although this was good it was missing some seasoning and either a dash of salt or a nice helping of their salty white cheese would have made it perfect. I washed mine down with a banana-cinammon shake, which was honestly not that great (the bananas were not nearly ripe enough).
Although I thought there were a couple of misses with this meal, I still love this place and want to go back already (we would be regulars if we lived on the LES).
