STARKVILLE — When Tiffany Wilson ate at Arepas Coffee and Bar, Starkville’s newest downtown restaurant, with friends on Friday, she had no familiarity with Venezuelan cuisine.
That was the case for plenty of Arapas’ customers the first week it opened, and many of them said they were happy the restaurant was helping bring variety to downtown — especially since “we don’t need another Mexican place,” Wilson said.
Venezuela native Jose Elarba said one reason he and his wife, Astrid Gonzalez, opened the restaurant on Oct. 5 was to introduce people to something new. He goes from table to table telling customers about the restaurant’s namesake food, arepas, a form of cornbread eaten daily in Venezuela and often used to make sandwiches.
“If I didn’t think (people could learn from this), I wouldn’t open the business,” Elarba said. “That’s the idea, to show people our culture and what we offer. If you go to Venezuela, you know what to ask for.”
The bread can have a corn, spinach or sweet potato base and comes with black beans, avocado, plantains, bacon and two cheeses. Customers can add a variety of meat toppings, and those who don’t eat meat can order tofu and ask to hold the bacon.
Elarba was born in Venezuela to a mother from Texas, so he had been to the United States several times to visit relatives before he permanently relocated about a year ago to escape his home country’s economic and political turmoil. He met Gonzalez in Houston, and they considered opening a restaurant there but decided they would rather open it in Starkville, where Gonzalez’s family is from.
They found the right place for their restaurant, Elarba said, in a vacant commercial space at 103 E. Main St.
“We were like, ‘I think this is an opportunity to start something,'” he said.
The menu’s Latin American food offerings don’t stop with arepas. Other options include empanadas, fried cheese sticks called tequenos and the “Venezuelan hot dog,” topped with onions, carrots, potato chips, mayo and ketchup.
The restaurant’s coffee menu ranges from cappuccinos to frappes to Americanos but also includes a few Latin American drinks like a panela, which is made from hardened sugar cane juice.
The churros on the dessert menu are especially good, according to Chris Gregory, a police officer who stopped at Arepas Thursday evening before a shift that would last until 6 a.m. Friday.
“I’m kind of a creature of habit, so the restaurants I go to are usually in a circuit,” he said. “(This) gives me a good change-up.”
Gregory said he knows Elarba and Gonzalez personally, as does Sandra Ortega, who brought her two sons to Arepas on Thursday.
“I know this kind of cuisine, and I can tell you that this one is good,” said Ortega, who is Colombian.
The restaurant is a good addition to Starkville’s repertoire, said Madeline Berry, a Mississippi State University graduate student from Pennsylvania, where larger cities like Pittsburgh have more variety to offer.
The owners are still figuring out what the best business hours are for them, but they started with 6 a.m.-8:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday and stay open until 11 p.m. or midnight on Fridays. Weekend hours are 10 a.m. to midnight on Saturday and 4 p.m. on Sunday. All hours are subject to change.
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