Tag: El Sabor Latino

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Food & Drink Hungry Memphis

Best Bets: Arepa de Choclo at El Sabor Latino

The arepa de choclo at El Sabor Latino is one of my new favorite food items. (Credit: Yuri Guzman)

I like when things like this happen.

I was eating at El Sabor Latino for a story I was doing on the Colombian restaurant. I began talking to some fellow diners when one of them offered me some of the pancake-looking item he was eating. He wanted me to try it.

I did. And now I’m hooked.

It’s an “arepa de choclo.” It’s sort of a pancake and sort of Southern cornbread. It’s sweet, but not very sweet. It has a great corn taste to it. It’s topped with a flat piece of cheese. And it comes with two pats of butter.

I love sweet and savory, so this fit the bill perfectly for me.

I asked El Sabor Latino owner Samir Restrepo to fill me in on this tasty whatever-you-call-it.

“Arepa is a cornbread,” Restrepo says. “It’s made with sweet corn flour.”

The cheese, he says, is “queso fresco,” he says. “It’s a white cheese.”

They serve arepas de choclo as an appetizer at El Sabor Latino. In Colombia, he says, they eat them in the morning as a breakfast item or at night as a dessert “with chocolate or coffee.”

The Colombian platter, which comes with a variety of Colombian items, includes the regular arepa, which is made with whole corn instead of the sweet corn flour.

In case you think you’re getting something even sweeter, “choclo” doesn’t mean “chocolate.” “‘Choclo’ is the sweet corn. In Colombia we call it ‘sweet corn.’”

A little background on Restrepo. He’s from Cali, Colombia. In 2003, he moved to Memphis, where he and his wife, Yuri Guzman, and her parents Carlos Ruiz and Esneth Azevedo decided to open a Colombian restaurant in Memphis, with Guzman and Azevedo, who owned El Punto del Sabor restaurant in Colombia, as chefs.

Restrepo plans to open his second restaurant, El Pollo Latino, in late September or early October. The restaurant will feature oven-roasted chicken cooked on a rotisserie. I can’t wait for that.

After I finished my arepa de choclo, I had to go next door to Kay Bakery for a gingerbread man, one of my favorite cookies. They use the bakery’s original cookie cutter and the original recipe for the gingerbread men, says Queo Bautista, who, along with his brother, Misael Bautista, bought the bakery in 2007.

El Sabor Latino is at 665 Avon Road; (901) 207-1818.

Kay Bakery is at 667 Avon Road; (901) 767-0780.

Gingerbread man at Kay Bakery (Credit: Michael Donahue)
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Food & Wine Food & Drink

A Taste of Colombia: El Pollo Latino to Open Next Month

Yuri Guzman, Samir Restrepo, and their son Sean Paul Restrepo at El Sabor Latino (Photo: Michael Donahue)

Samir Restrepo, owner of El Sabor Latino, is opening a second restaurant, El Pollo Latino, in September.

“El Pollo Latino” means “The Latin Chicken,” says Restrepo.

The restaurant, which will be at 3698 Summer Avenue, will feature oven-roasted chicken cooked on a rotisserie. “There are so many ingredients in there,” Restrepo says. “You’ve got to taste it. It’s not a spicy chicken, and it’s not going to be sweet. It will be something different.”

Restrepo got the recipe from his wife’s uncle, Eugenio Sanchez, who lives in Colombia and co-owns a chain of 30 El Fogon del Pollo restaurants that sell this type of chicken.

“I always wanted to bring something different to the city. I’ve been here for so many years. My two kids are from here,” he says.

Restrepo, who is from Cali, Colombia, lived in Miami for three years before moving to Memphis in 2003. “I see a lot of opportunity in Memphis. The quality of life. It’s cheaper than to live in Miami. And I know that Memphis is going to grow. At that time it was a small city. It was small to me because I moved from Miami.”

Restrepo and his wife, Yuri Guzman, and her parents Carlos Ruiz and Esneth Azevedo decided to open a Colombian restaurant in Memphis, with Guzman and Azevedo, who owned El Punto del Sabor restaurant in Colombia, as chefs. “When you go to Miami, you see 100 different Latin food restaurants. I wanted to try something here.

“We started at a fair on Winchester. We opened a tent just to try and see if people liked our food.” They ran the restaurant for two years at the fair, selling empanadas, plantains with cheese, and Colombian hamburgers.

They also sold a “bandeja paisa,” or “great plate,” which Restrepo describes as a “typical Colombian platter with pork belly, chorizo pork sausage, steak, rice, sweet plantains, avocado, red beans, and arepa, which is like a cornbread.

“We see that people like it. That’s why we were like, ‘Okay, let’s go on and try to open a restaurant and see how it goes.’”

On October 12, 2015, they opened El Sabor Latino or “The Latin Flavor” at 665 Avon Road. Business was slow at first. People who go to Mexican restaurants are already familiar with the food. “You know what a taco is, what a fajita is,” he says. But Colombian cuisine is “something different. People were just tasting and learning about the food. The first three years it was hard until people knew the food.”

Among the fare customers came to know was the Colombian hamburger, Restrepo says. “We put a lot of secret ingredients on the meat, and we put a pineapple with it, which makes it different.” The burger comes with bacon, cheese, lettuce, and cooked onions. “We also put potato chips on the burgers,” he says.

There’s also a Colombian hot dog on the menu, with pineapple, bacon, mayonnaise, mustard, and potato chips on top. The bun is different from the bun most people are familiar with, Restrepo says. “We bring the recipe for the bread from Colombia. It’s kind of soft. It’s not sweet.”

They also sell Colombian breakfasts, including the “desayuno campesino,” or “farmer’s breakfast,” which features scrambled eggs with onions and tomatoes, beef sausage, rice, and “dedos de queso,” or “cheese bread.”

El Pollo Latino is only five minutes away from El Sabor Latino, so Restrepo will be able to quickly travel between the two.

As for opening a third restaurant some day, Restrepo says, “It’s in God’s hands. It’s on him. He gives us all the help. If he wants us to do another one, we’ll do it.”

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

A taste of Colombia from El Sabor Latino and Arepas Deliciosas

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.