If you're indecisive about what you're in the mood to eat, walk down East 7th street in the East Village. Start on Second Avenue and go until Avenue A and you'll walk by every type of restaurant, big, small, loud and quiet and they all look delish. I met my friend Meghan on 7th between First and A in hopes of eating at Pylos, a greek restaurant I've been wanting to try. Unfortunately, we didn't have a reservation and they couldn't seat us. So we walked up the block searching for the next best option. Caracas Arepa Bar won the menu toss off and we were seated right away beating the crowd that came in minutes later. I have to admit, I'm an arepa novice but they do look and smell amazing every time I see them at street fairs.
Meghan is a vegetarian and I'm definitely not, so we decided to get a salad with avocado and hearts of palm and then three arepas. One with beef for me and two other vegetarian ones for both of us to share. They came out fast and hot and smelled amazing. They didn't look like the ones from the street fair (those are flat and only filled with cheese). Instead imagine a pita stuffed with goodness inside, but instead of pita its a corn and flour tortilla. The beef one (La de Pabellón), was filled with bbq beef, black beans, fried plantains and sprinkeled with cheese. It was so good! The mixture of the barbecue tasting beef with the sweet plantains was awesome. I finished that one first and slowly moved onto the others. Next I tried the La Mulata which was filled with black beans, jalapenos, plantains and grilled white cheese. My first bite went directly into a jalapeno and my mouth lit on fire, but in a good way. The last one we got was another vegetarian one, La Jardinera, which had eggplant, sun dried tomatoes, caramelized onions and melted cheese. That was my second favorite because of my resumed love of eggplant and it wasn't as spicy as the second one.
I was too full to finish all three arepas (I suggest 1 per person if you get an appetizer) and we had to save room for the second part of my evening, Butter Lane Cupcakes. The bakery is known for their $1 icing shots and they have around 10 different flavors. I don't like icing as much as the cake, so I didn't try them. But I have heard amazing things. Instead, I was intrigued by the fact that you can choose your own cake and icing to make your own cupcake! They offer three different kinds of cake, vanilla, chocolate and banana and the 10 same icings as above. They have the most popular ones listed for you so I got one of those, the banana cake with cream cheese icing. And then I got a chocolate cake with peanut butter icing. Peanut butter and chocolate is the best combination ever created by the way.
As much as I wanted to like the chocolate and peanut butter one, the cake was too dry and the top was hard. I'm sure it would have been a lot better if the cake was fresher. However, the icing was great. The banana and cream cheese was so much better. The cake was moist and tasted exactly like banana and the cream cheese icing was above par. At $3 a cupcake, it was worth to try two and I would definitely go back to try other combos. Meghan got a banana with peanut butter icing with couldn't have been bad, and then another one with pistachio icing as well.
You could eat your way through 7th street if you had the time and stomach. Next stops are Pylos with a reservation, Luke's Lobster Bar and Porchetta.
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