Arepas Deliciosas – Memphis Flyer

I feel almost certain that when the folks at Memphis in May were deciding on which country to feature in 2017, someone had recently eaten at either El Sabor Latino or Arepas Deliciosas, two Colombian restaurants that opened in October 2015 along the Summer Avenue corridor.

When asked what distinguishes Colombian food from other South American or Central American cuisine, both owners replied with similar descriptions — fresh, homemade, and healthy.

Blanca Simpson, who owns Arepas Deliciosas, first replied “delicious.”

“Many people think that Colombian food is hot and greasy, but it’s more natural and homemade,” says the Pereira, Risaralda, native.

Esnet Acevedo, who owns El Sabor Latino with her son-in-law, Samir Restrepo, her daughter, Yuri Restrepo, and her husband, Carlos Ruiz, provided a similar description.

“It’s home-cooked with quality — fresh and healthy,” Acevedo says, with Samir translating.

El Sabor Latino, located just off Summer at 665 Avon, offers an extensive menu, including a daily plate plan. For $37.99, patrons can come in for five days and receive a different full Colombian meal each day.

Plates can come with steak, rice, fried plantains, arepas, a salad, and soup, or any sort of variety thereof. There are several dozen options to mix together.

Their biggest seller is the Bandeja Paisa, or “Typical Colombian Platter” ($14.25), with grilled steak, Colombian sausage, pork rinds, a fried egg, rice, arepa, sweet plantains, avocado, and red beans.

“We sell that every day,” Samir, who was born in Cali, Valle del Cauca, says.

Simpson first opened Arepas Deliciosas in Bartlett in October 2014 and a year later moved the restaurant to Summer. She uses the arepa as a base for most of her dishes, such as the Arepa Rellena con Aguacate y Guacamole (stuffed arepa with guacamole and avocado, $5.50), or the Arepa con Carne (arepa with shredded meat, $7.50).

Simpson and her staff make everything from scratch, including the pork sausage and the arepas.

“We buy whole white corn, cook it, then grind it, then we make the patties,” Simpson says.

Both restaurants offer hamburgers.

At Arepas Deliciosas, located at 3698 Summer, the hamburger comes on an, wait for it, arepa! and the customer can dress it with tomato, lettuce, avocado, what have you ($7.50).

At El Sabor Latino, they offer it on an American bun but topped with potato chips and pineapple, along with all the other typical fixings ($8.75).

They do the same thing with their hot dog, topped with potato chips and pineapple, as well as bacon, cheese, ketchup, and mayonnaise served on housemade bread ($7.99).

Samir and team — his daughter, Mayerlin Restrepo, waits tables — prepare specialty plates on the weekends, typical Colombian dishes that are a bit more complicated and more difficult to prepare on a daily basis.

Including tamales.

“Our tamales are big,” Samir says. “They come on a big plate. Different states make them in different ways. Ours is from Cali.”

They wrap it in a plantain leaf and stuff it with pork, potato, carrot, onion, tomatoes, and their own special seasoning.

Arepas Deliciosas serve up daily soup or salad specials, such as Cazuela de Frijol, Arroz, Tajada de Platano, or bean casserole with rice and a slice of plantain ($7.99).

Both restaurants serve breakfast.

No one can talk about Colombian cuisine without mentioning the juices. Both offer a long list of juices to choose from maracuyá (passionfruit), mango, guanabana (soursop), and many more.

“These are all my mother’s menu,” Simpson says. “This is what I ate growing up.”

“In Colombia, my mother-in-law cooked, and when she moved here, she worked in a restaurant,” Samir says.

“When we first moved to Memphis, when I would go to Florida or Georgia, I would go straight to a Colombian restaurant because there was nothing here. We took a chance opening a strictly Colombian restaurant. Nobody knew what it was.

“I think it’s good what the city is doing [with Memphis in May], so that we can know different cultures. Memphis is growing, and we have more cultures coming in. It can open people’s eyes.”

El Sabor Latino, 665 Avon, 207-1818. Open Mon.-Sat., 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., Sun. 8 a.m. to
7 p.m. Find them on social media.

Arepas Deliciosas, 3698 Summer, 409-3396. Open Mon. – Thurs., 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., Fri.,
11 a.m. to 9 p.m., and Sat., 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Closed Sunday. Find them on Facebook.

It’s always fun to order something that’s not on the menu. So when I heard Arepas Deliciosas owner Blanca Castaño-Simpson mention her top-secret Colombian tamales ($7), I had to try one.

I definitely wasn’t prepared for what showed up at the table. For starters, Colombian tamales are huge! They’re like plump iPad minis wrapped in dark-green banana leaves. And unlike most Mexican tamales, they are wickedly chunky. The masa (corn dough) is practically swimming with carrots, peas, and plantains — not to mention a whole, cooked chicken leg and an enormous chicharrón (fried pork rind).

John Minervini

Blanca Castaño-Simpson

These tamales are a hit. Castaño-Simpson grinds her own corn to make masa, and you can definitely tell. It’s got an amazing, fresh flavor, one that pairs perfectly with the savory-sweet filling.

Where did Castaño-Simpson get her culinary moxie? Why, in her mother’s kitchen (claro). She grew up in Pereira, Colombia, a medium-size town at the foot of the Andes Mountains.

“It’s like paradise,” she opines, with a far-off look in her eyes. “Like a nice spring day, every day, all year. The people are very friendly, and the food is wonderful.”

You can practically taste the fine weather in the bandeja paisa ($14.99), a signature Colombian dish. It’s a huge, oval-shaped platter, overflowing with pork belly, plantains, arepas (corn patties), white rice, and fried egg. Preparations vary from region to region, but Castaño-Simpson’s version also includes chorizo, ground beef, and avocado.

The beauty of this cuisine is its simplicity. Inevitably, whenever I asked Castaño-Simpson what was in a dish, the answer began the same way: tomatoes and onions and maybe two or three other ingredients. A good example is the salsa fresca: tomatoes, onions, cilantro, lemon juice, vinegar. It really is that simple! But if you know how to balance these ingredients, they pack a powerful punch.

Nosh-A-Rye — located in the lobby of the Memphis Jewish Home & Rehab — keeps kosher. In other words, they follow the rules of kashrut (Jewish dietary law). Rule number one: no mixing meat and dairy. Other forbidden foods include shellfish, pork, camel, and rock badger. Why would you want to eat in a restaurant if you can’t order rock badger? The answer, my friend, is simple. It’s geshmak — that’s Yiddish for yummy.

Case in point: the corned beef sandwich ($6.99). As sandwiches go, it’s pretty straightforward, just corned beef and fresh spinach on rye bread. No mustard, nothing. But taste it, and tell me if the meat doesn’t speak for itself. Flown in from a kosher butcher in New York, it’s moist and tender, faintly salty, with a subtle, spicy flavor.

The man behind the improvements is Nosh-A-Rye’s new manager, Kurt Abisch (and the Deli team of Chef Dovid Cenker, Bobbie Yarbrough, and Isreal Howard). Raised in Israel, Abisch spent the past 15 years working in kosher food service in New York City. Now he’s bringing that know-how — and a long list of kosher food distributors — to Memphis. “In New York, my first big order was for a Reform temple in the Bronx,” remembers Abisch, furrowing his thick eyebrows. “I brought in the kosher dairy, and they said, ‘Put it over there, by the shrimp.’ I was like, ‘Oh boy.”

Since coming on in April, Abisch has revamped the menu at Nosh-A-Rye, adding things like the knockwurst hot dog ($2.99) and Turkish coffee ($2). (“I tell the old ladies,” he adds, “it grows hairs on your chest.”) But he has kept customer favorites like the matzo ball soup ($2.59) and the fried chicken ($6.99).

I know what you’re thinking: fried chicken at a kosher deli? But if you happen to be an observant Jew, this is one of just two places in town where you can order the stuff. (The other is Holy Cow, in the lobby of the MJCC.) And come on, it just wouldn’t be Memphis without fried chicken.

Abisch has also started a series of international dinners, offering kosher takes on cuisines from around the world. The next is an Italian Feast on October 22nd, featuring beef carpaccio and sweet potato gnocchi. At that event, there will also be a performance by opera singer Stephen Len White, who will sing selections from The Phantom of the Opera.