New food truck serves up Venezuelan fare

Have you noticed the same thing I have? For those of us who’ve been in Oly for awhile, it’s a little unfamiliar, but lately I’ve been served by a lot of cheerful servers all across town who seem to be happy I’m there and want to get food to their customers quickly. They’re nice and helpful. We’ve suffered for too many years under the oppression bad customer service, but I think the tide is turning.

A good example of this trend is Arepa, a lovely food truck, covered in black and white images of people and food on the corner of 4th Avenue and Plum Street. It’s in that little area that hopes to become like the food truck scene in Portland… someday. Someday.

And there’s hope, because Arepa is delicious.

Arepa is a family business started by the Soccorro family, friends of the owners of La Gitana, a pizza place with locations in Olympia and Yelm. The Soccorro’s moved here from Miami to help get Gitana off the ground. Some of them still work there while launching Arepa, which serves traditional Venezuelan street food.

(Gitana, if you haven’t been, is delicious and the folks who run it are unbelievably sweet. Try the Il Sogno and add onions on gluten free crust. Trust me.)

When we walked up to the truck, we were greeted by a very cheerful woman named Maribelle, who was working at Arepa with her brother-in-law, Jose. She explained all the aspects of the menu and was extraordinarily sweet and helpful. (Like I said, this just might be part of a trend.) We ordered, and the food came fast and with smiles. Customer service!

The menu is mostly a variety of things you can put inside arepas (corn buns), patacon (fried plantains), empanadas and chacapas. My friend got pork patacon, and I got Argentinian skirt steak and fries. The plantains were fried and delicious and topped with red cabbage and tomatoes. The sauce was a little sweet and the pork in the patacon was delicious and not greasy. The skirt steak was pretty perfectly cooked in a sweet sauce I couldn’t identify—but it was great. The fries were well cooked and deliciously seasoned.

We’ll definitely go back for the arepas. I’d like to try the avocado chicken salad, and my friend wants to try another one that she thinks sounds like a delicious Venezuelan hot pocket.

The food truck culture has had some trouble catching on here in Oly; there wasn’t anyone at any of the other food trucks while we were there: the taco truck; Nineveh, the Syrian food place; and the sandwich spot. Granted, it was almost 2 PM, but still.

There have been several food truck attempts that have come and gone in the last few years. But if the Socorros are much like their friends from La Gitana, they’ll hopefully stick it out and we’ll all benefit from a little bit of Venezuela on the streets of Oly. ◙

Visit www.arepalatinstreetfood.com for menu descriptions, lovely pictures of their food, and contact information.