A refreshing and addictive Peach Tea Julep made with tea-infused bourbon.

Check it out here

Poorly Documented, and Sparsely Tweeted, a good time was had by all, and now the votes have been tabulated.

With Oscar, our resident expert (and inspiration for the entire venture) in town from London we headed out to Shachis, Arepa Arepa, and the new Brooklyn outpost of Caracas – whose East Village store is the only place prior I had ever had arepas.

Oscar designed us a little score card to use to standardize our scoring on 8 parameters: Authenticity (which was only for Oscar’s use, as the rest of us have no idea what an authentic arepa should be like); The consistency / texture of the actual arepa; The filling; The ratio of filling to dough; The variety on offer at the restaurant: the variety of arepas as well as other items on their menus; The overall taste; Atmosphere; and Service.

We decided to order four arepas at each restaurant (there were five of us on the crawl) and maybe an extra item or two. Everyone tasted every arepa, and we used the shredded beef, or shredded beef with cheese as the constant at each venue.

Here’s what we ordered:

The clear winner by the numbers was Arepa Arepa, but we found things to like and things to dislike at every place we went.

Shachis was homey and lovely, the owners seemed genuinely pleased we were there and were happy about what we were doing. Their plantain chips were lovely, and we ate far more than we should have here. The empanadas we ordered as well were very nice, and they gave us a great little hot sauce. I personally loved the Reina Pepiada, but we didn’t have it again for comparison. This was the only place of the night where the arepas were pressed in a machine, and while they were nice and crispy on the outside, we all agreed that they were ultimately too doughy. Plus there was a solid soundtrack of early 90s dance hits (oh yes … they played Right Said Fred). Shachis is cute, and the food seemed genuine and lovingly prepared, but it seems clear that competition has kind of caught them off guard.

Arepa Arepa was next, and as soon as we walked in it felt good. The other party there seemed to be having a great time, and the owner was super-friendly and welcoming. They don’t have a liquor license here, but the selection of jugos naturales was enticing. The mango basil juice was the hit of the night. The arepas we ordered here didn’t look nearly as crispy as the ones from Shachis had looked, but the fillings were excellent, although the Peluda was almost shockingly salty. The caraotas, a mixture of black beans, cheese, avocado and plantains, was absolutely spectacular. As soon as we took a bite of the arepas what had looked undercooked turned out to be the best texture of the night. Just crisp enough and not too thick. Maybe these aren’t as traditional, they certainly seemed less greasy than either place, but they worked fantastically with the fillings. The owner also served us a Cachapa, (he told us as we were leaving that had been working on perfecting the recipe for months, and this was actually the first he had ever sold) which is a kind of pancake with cormeal and sweet corn mixed that is covered with melted Guayanés cheese. This was actually everyone’s hands-down favorite dish of the night. The sweetness of the corn and the cheese and texture were just fantastic.

Caracas was our last stop of the night, and Oscar agreed that this was definitely the most authentic of the bunch, be that a good thing or a bad. The general consensus was that the arepas were very good, but seemed to fall apart from the sometimes overly soupy fillings. And an appetizer of tequeños was uninspired at best. The cocktails here were very nice though, and that’s a big part of why we decided to end the night here. The back garden is beautiful and the atmosphere here was jovial and nice. However the service here walked that fine line between uncaring and standoffish. It’s not that it was spectacularly terrible service, it just paled in comparison to the other two places we went where the owners greeted us warmly and wanted to talk to us about the food etc. The staff at Caracas seemed almost bothered that we were there.

There’s no doubt in my mind that Caracas will continue to be the hotspot, as its east village originals will attest, but we all agreed that where we’d most like to eat at again was Arepa Arepa. The final scores of the night: