Best Thing I Ate This Week: Venezuelan Arepas

I first heard about Nova Bakery, a small cafe in Long Beach that offers fast casual Venezuelan food, from my friend Juan Loza, who runs Opochtli, a local ceviche pop-up.

The bakery lived up to his recommendation. I tried the cachapas, a griddled corn cake folded in half and sprinkled with grated cheese, and a few empanadas that contained both beef and chicken — both were tasty.

But the menu item that stopped me in my tracks was the arepas. If you’ve never had one, the arepa occupies a nebulous space between a sandwich, a taco, and a pupusa. It features a “bun” made with white corn flour, cooked on a flat-top grill, and then filled with beef, chicken, or salchicha.

I opted for the salchicha, a hot dog type of chicken sausage cut into rounds. After one bite, this particular arepa felt like what I always hope a Big Mac from McDonald's will taste like.

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The jungle of densely packed, melted grated white cheese, mixed with their signature tangy fry sauce lying atop the sausage delivered a balanced, spicy, and perfectly layered sweetness—a mouthful of goodness.

While savoring my arepa, the much-debated question,” Is a hot dog a sandwich?” came to mind. It was then I realized I’d just stumbled upon a delicious loophole.