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QUOTE
Though our appetite for skullduggery is essentially insatiable, we began to get more interested in the tens of thousands of ordinary Venezuelans who have recently resettled in South Florida. We wondered what they did for a meal when they were just hungry for an arepa in a place that made them feel at home.
So we fired up the GPS and motored out to suburban Doral, the largest Venezuelan enclave in the country and home to El Arepazo (the big arepa). This turned out to be a combination superette and counter restaurant serving Venezuelan specialties. We went for the split arepa filled with carne mechado, mildly spiced shredded beef. It was a filling snack but no cause to write home about to your abuela on the shores of Lake Maracaibo.
Of three such informal outposts of la cocina venezolana that we sampled, the best was in Weston, aka Westonzuela, where we gobbled down a pure, plain, white-crumbed arepa, light as such a heavy handful can be, at Cafe Canela, in a mall between a Subway and a pizzeria.
If we liked hallacas better, the textbook example of this squarish Venezuelan version of the tamal, cornmeal mush studded with meat and raisins and wrapped in a banana leaf, at Caballo Viejo in Miami proper would have won our sweepstakes. But neither the live TV news from Caracas nor the locally published Venezuelan newspapers in the room at Caballo Viejo were enough to woo us away from that masterpiece of hand over matter at Cafe Canela.
Fortunately, for the inquiring palates among you, the very best Venezuelan food in the Miami area is not in such out of the way locations, but discreetly waiting on La Giralda, the svelte restaurant row in affluent Coral Gables. Cacao Restaurant is the clever brainchild of Edgar Leal, a top-flight chef of Venezuelan origin whose menus feature reinventions of classic dishes from all over Latin America, especially Peru.
But if you look carefully, you will discover that Mr. Leal knows how to turn asado negro, the Venezuelan pot roast in a dark, caramelized sauce, into a visual delight of overlapping slices of fork-tender beef napped with a glistening pool of black. He transforms the traditional corn pancake, the cachapa, into a dainty souffle with guayanés cheese from Venezuela.
We also enjoyed such sophisticated turns on Venezuelan favorites as arepa chips with chicken and avocado puree and a molten chocolate dessert made from the celebrated Venezuelan chocolate El Rey.
Mr. Leal is an equal-opportunity improviser on all the major Latin American cuisines. So you will be just as happy tucking into his wild boar tenderloin anticucho (the Peruvian brochette originally made with llama heart) in a peppy Peruvian sauce with mashed potatoes energized by the Andean yellow chili (ají amarillo). Or order the very refined boned quail stuffed with a mousse of chorizo and chicken. All these dishes are presented with flourishes of decorative edible swooshes that are visual signs of Mr. Leal's training in top kitchens in Europe.
So we fired up the GPS and motored out to suburban Doral, the largest Venezuelan enclave in the country and home to El Arepazo (the big arepa). This turned out to be a combination superette and counter restaurant serving Venezuelan specialties. We went for the split arepa filled with carne mechado, mildly spiced shredded beef. It was a filling snack but no cause to write home about to your abuela on the shores of Lake Maracaibo.
Of three such informal outposts of la cocina venezolana that we sampled, the best was in Weston, aka Westonzuela, where we gobbled down a pure, plain, white-crumbed arepa, light as such a heavy handful can be, at Cafe Canela, in a mall between a Subway and a pizzeria.
If we liked hallacas better, the textbook example of this squarish Venezuelan version of the tamal, cornmeal mush studded with meat and raisins and wrapped in a banana leaf, at Caballo Viejo in Miami proper would have won our sweepstakes. But neither the live TV news from Caracas nor the locally published Venezuelan newspapers in the room at Caballo Viejo were enough to woo us away from that masterpiece of hand over matter at Cafe Canela.
Fortunately, for the inquiring palates among you, the very best Venezuelan food in the Miami area is not in such out of the way locations, but discreetly waiting on La Giralda, the svelte restaurant row in affluent Coral Gables. Cacao Restaurant is the clever brainchild of Edgar Leal, a top-flight chef of Venezuelan origin whose menus feature reinventions of classic dishes from all over Latin America, especially Peru.
But if you look carefully, you will discover that Mr. Leal knows how to turn asado negro, the Venezuelan pot roast in a dark, caramelized sauce, into a visual delight of overlapping slices of fork-tender beef napped with a glistening pool of black. He transforms the traditional corn pancake, the cachapa, into a dainty souffle with guayanés cheese from Venezuela.
We also enjoyed such sophisticated turns on Venezuelan favorites as arepa chips with chicken and avocado puree and a molten chocolate dessert made from the celebrated Venezuelan chocolate El Rey.
Mr. Leal is an equal-opportunity improviser on all the major Latin American cuisines. So you will be just as happy tucking into his wild boar tenderloin anticucho (the Peruvian brochette originally made with llama heart) in a peppy Peruvian sauce with mashed potatoes energized by the Andean yellow chili (ají amarillo). Or order the very refined boned quail stuffed with a mousse of chorizo and chicken. All these dishes are presented with flourishes of decorative edible swooshes that are visual signs of Mr. Leal's training in top kitchens in Europe.
Cacao in Coral Gables
WSJ
