Arepitas
Tony Caselle and Maria Fernanda Rodriguez cook Caracas food to order in a Harker Heights strip unit, and the tostones outsell everything. They fry nothing before you ask, so the wait starts at fifteen minutes.
Why go
Caselle and Rodriguez came to Central Texas from Caracas and opened a kitchen cooking what they grew up on.1 His parents taught him; her late mother taught her.1 When we moved here something awoke in me,
Maria told Tex Appeal. I started to cook things like mom used to cook.
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The board runs arepas, the white cornmeal pocket, stuffed with whatever you want in it, plus tequeños, cachapas, empanadas and pepito.1 They make everything from scratch daily and cook it after you order.1 Tony's line on that, to Tex Appeal: It's not fast food.
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Order this / avoid
- Order: the tostones, the best seller.1
- Order: an arepa, and let them fill it.1
- Avoid: a tight lunch hour. Tony puts the minimum wait at fifteen minutes and says it has run to an hour.1
What locals & experts say
- Catherine Hosman, Tex Appeal Magazine (29 July 2018):
Tostones is a rainbow of fresh vegetables cut daily, homemade sauces and light cheese mounded on a layer of crispy, fried plantains.
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Good to know
- The room in the feature is not this room. Hosman reported from 360 W Central Texas Expressway, Suite 205, in 2018, and Arepitas now trades at 440 E Central Texas Expy, Suite 101, on the other side of the highway.1
- No alcohol served in 2018, with bring-your-own allowed. Worth a call before you plan around it.1
Verdict
could-visit — Two cooks from Caracas making their mothers' food from scratch, on an expressway frontage road in a garrison town, is a real thing and Tex Appeal put a byline on it. The tostones are the dish they built the following on, and the fifteen-minute floor on every order is the honest cost of a kitchen that fries plantains after you ask. The one published account of the place is eight years old and describes a room across the highway from the one they trade in now, so go with the tostones in mind and the rest open.