By: Roberto Saprissa and Michael Bahiru
El Arepazo stands out as one of Toronto’s only Venezuelan restaurants. Located in Toronto’s prominent Kensington Market, El Arepazo specializes in making a staple dish of Venezuelan cuisine: arepas.
The arepa is a street food dish which Talya Davidson, the restaurant’s co-owner, describes as a “Venezuelan hamburger.”
“We make it out of corn bread; we cut it like a pita and stuff it with meats, cheeses, veggies. It gets crispy like a corn shell on the outside and the dough inside soaks all the flavours from the ingredients,” Davidson said.
El Arepazo has been operating at 181 Augusta Avenue for two years.
Customers come to El Arepazo its traditional Venezuelan dishes but they come to Kensington Market for its relaxed atmosphere. While certain older Latino restaurants like Gordo Ex Cafe or Arepa Cafe, focus on serving high cuisine, El Arepazo focuses on serving street food, which Davidson says helps El Arepazo stand out.
“Kensington market is a tourist attraction within itself. Even Torontonians come here on the weekends. It’s not just another street where you are passing by and going into a place, you come here to eat to drink. We definitely feel that the weekend crowd is very prominent here,” said Davidson.
Davidson said that she was beginning to build her brand long before she opened El Arepazo. Five years ago, when Davidson was just selling juices in a small stall, she said she’d developed the restaurant’s branding the same way she developed the restaurant’s menu, “little by little.”
“We got the opportunity to open this place and we took it,” said Davidson. “We basically jumped on things before we had a chance to think about it much.”
Davidson says that one of El Arepazo’s most popular dishes is called “chorizo.” It is made with Colombian sausage which is made in-house by Davidson’s partner, Luis Vega. The price range of an arepa at El Arepazo? Between nine and 12 dollars.
Even though El Arepazo is still fairly new, Davidson said she is happy with the reception El Arepazo has had in the city so far.
“People love arepas, especially Canadians who haven’t tried it before. Our clientele is half Colombian/Venezuelan and the other half is Canadian. I think it’s the only place in town where you can get a mix of both in one place and it’s totally fluid. I mean where else can you have people of so many cultures sitting together,” Davidson said.
Davidson says that everyone in El Arepazo knows how to make arepas. Davidson learned how to make arepas from her parents, who are Venezuelan.
El Arepazo has been featured in the Toronto Star and was also named the seventh best Latin American restaurant by BlogTO.
(Header photo courtesy of Daniel Hartmann.)
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