Arepas arrive in London's hipster-haven Brick Lane

All text and photographs copyright Russell Maddicks
Follow me on Twitter: @venezuelaguide

It's only fitting that one of East London's trendiest hipster hangouts now has a food truck selling this year's hottest new street food: arepas.

In Venezuela and Colombia these fluffy corn-dough pockets are stuffed with tasty savoury fillings like beef, chicken and cheese to make snacks you can eat anytime of the day.

Now Venezuelan expat Giacomo Tomaselli and his Polish partner Inga have brought their own twist on classic arepa recipes to the Brick Lane area.

It's not hard to find them: a massive sign announces "Arepa: Venezuelan Street Kitchen" and some very tropical multicoloured stripes decorate their shiny black Arepazos Bros food truck in Ely's Yard. This otherwise unremarkable car park round the back of the Old Truman Brewery (E1 6QL) comes alive from midday as the food trucks open up and the area fills with diners taking a break from browsing the market stalls, pop-up art galleries, vintage clothes shops, and racks of vinyl in the Rough Trade indie record store.

The menu features a choice of three arepa fillings: the traditional pabellon (shredded beef or chicken with plantain, black beans and cheese), the vegetarian domino (black beans, grated cheese, pico de gallo, and guacamole), and the Peruvian inspired ceviche (fish marinated in lemon juice).

Giacomo explained that after much experimentation he had decided to add a fresh-tasting Mexican-style pico de gallo sauce to his arepas made from roughly-chopped tomato, onion, and coriander.

He also serves a thick avocado guacamole, rather than the runnier Venezuelan sauce known as guasacaca.

The day I went I had the pabellon. The shredded beef was just right, the guacamole was thick and creamy, and the plantain fries were crispy.

A set of benches in front of the stall offers covered seating for customers. Five other food trucks sell a variety of burgers, chicken and pulled pork if there's somebody in your party who wants an alternative to arepas.

You can even bring your own booze if you want to wash down your arepas with a few cold beers bought from a local corner store (always a great way to save a few pennies).

 

Giacomo is originally from Caraballeda, a town on the Caribbean coast of Venezuela near the capital Caracas. His grandfather ran a famous ice-cream parlour called Helados Tomaselli near the old Macuto Sheraton. The food truck is Giacomo's very own creation, made from an old horse box.

If you come from Liverpool Street Tube station the route takes you past the old Spitalfield's Market and entry to Ely's Yard is from Hanbury Street, or Dray Walk if you're coming from Brick Lane.

 

Once you've eaten your arepas you can check out the Brick Lane clothes market and some of the street art in the area. 

There's at least one Banksy painted on a wall in Brick Lane. The street is famous for its Bangladeshi curry houses, although if you come on a Sunday when the local markets are in full swing, be ready to to wade through the hordes of hipsters in skinny jeans and Doc Martin boots that fill the streets.

The Venezuelan Bollito - A Boiled Cornflour Snack

For a typical Venezuelan breakfast, when you are short of time, try boiling your cornflour dough instead of making arepas. The resulting submarine-shaped "bollos" are ready in just 15 minutes. (photo copyright Russell Maddicks)

That white submarine at the back of the plate is a bollo (pronounced: bo-jyo), also known as a bollito (pronounced: bo-jyito).
They are made from the same dough used to make arepas, from pre-cooked corn flour.
Like many Venezuelans I use Harina Pan to make my arepas and bollos.
All you need to do is add water and knead the dough until you can shape it easily and it isn't too dry to form cracks.
Instead of forming the dough into flying saucer shapes and frying or baking your arepas, bollos are roughly shaped into submarines and boiled in water for about 15 minutes. You know they are ready when they float to the surface.
It's a really quick way to get your daily cornbread fix.
For breakfast I like to serve bollitos with perico (eggs scrambled with onions and tomatoes) and grated yellow cheese.
In some places in Venezuela, you find bollo pelon, which are bollos stuffed with minced beef or shredded chicken cooked in a sauce.
In Colombia, the bollo limpio is slightly different as the corn dough submarines are wrapped in a corn husk before being boiled.
In Venezuela this kind of bollo is called an hallaquita.
Just to confuse matters further, in Ecuador and some other Andean countries, there is a very similar corn dish called humita. These are typically made from fresh ground corn which is wrapped in corn husks and steamed, often with cheese mixed into the dough.
The ultimate bollo is the hallaca, a cornmeal-dough pocket stuffed with a host of tasty ingredients, wrapped in a plantain leaf, which is eaten at Christmas.

Related recipes:
How to Make Arepas
How to Make Perico
How to Make Hallacas 

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