Mayra Pacheco recently celebrated the grand opening of Amaizing Arepa Bar (500 N. 14th St.) in downtown St. Louis. The brick-and-mortar restaurant marks a new chapter for Pacheco, after years of selling arepas and other Venezuela-inspired dishes at area farmers’ markets and festivals. Here’s what to know before you go.
The Menu
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Customers who discovered Mayra and her sister, Maria Pacheco, at the Tower Grove Farmers Market or local festivals may already have their favorite dishes, such as cachapas, sweet corn pancakes smothered with shredded beef and queso de mano (homemade cheese), or tequeños (cheese-stuffed rolls of dough served with cilantro sauce). The spirals are popular as a hearty snack, and Pacheco’s version can easily become a meal.
Fans of empanadas will tell you that these fried turnovers filled with beef, chicken, or cheese taste even better with the cilantro dipping sauce. Of all the menu items, empanadas are the fastest to grab and go, which is why they’re a centerpiece of the restaurant’s Cantina special—five meals and a fountain drink for $50. Customers who’ve put down their weekly deposit can come in anytime to choose the lunch of the day, two empanadas, or an arepa.
The restaurant draws its name from arepas, which in Venezuelan cuisine are round sandwich-style cornmeal cakes stuffed with fillings that can range from eggs and onions or ham and cheese to chicken with avocado, shredded beef, and black beans with queso blanco. The Amaizing Arepa Bar allows customers to either select from a base menu or create their own arepas with up to four toppings of proteins, vegetables, and sauces.
Don’t miss the Venezuelan plate, a.k.a. pabellón criollo, the country’s national dish, whose history goes back to the 16th century. While shredded beef is traditional, the Pachecos serve pabellón with protein options of beef, chicken, pork, or pork belly.
Among the fresh-made drinks are chicha, a rice-and-milk beverage topped with cinnamon and nutmeg, and papelón con limón, a refreshing brew with fresh-squeezed lime juice and raw sugar that’s reminiscent of lemonade and iced tea. Bottles of Maltín Polar resemble beer bottles at first glance, but they’re actually a lightly carbonated, nonalcoholic malt beverage made from barley, hops, and water.
Mayra says the restaurant is still in the process of getting its license to serve wine and beer. Once they have it, she promises, they’ll add Polar Pilsen to the menu. Made by the same company that produces Maltín, the beer is brewed in a Czech style but “tropicalized.” There will be a selection of American beers and wines as well.
While the kitchen and counter staff are ramping up in the next few weeks, Mayra says they’re holding off with offering certain menu items, including pepitos, sub-style sandwiches stuffed with an elaborate variety of meats and vegetables plus shoestring potatoes on 8-inch-long buns. In Venezuela, she says, these would be rolled in paper to help hold in the fillings and then cut in half to make them easier to eat while on the go.
Patacones have similar heaps of filling, but they’re served on slices of twice-fried green plantains. Keep an eye out also for a trifecta of meats (chicken, beef, and chorizo) served with papas rústicas, (potato chunks fried with the skin still on); fried yucca with chorizo; and boiled yucca with fried cheese.
Among the dishes that slated to be added in the future, pasticho is one of the most intriguing. It’s a lasagna-style dish layered with ham, meat sauce, and cheese.
Maria says cheese is key in many Venezuelan dishes, including cachapas and arepas, and their restaurant uses two main kinds—semi-hard, unripened queso Guayanés and soft, handmade queso de mano—along with others ranging from feta to mozzarella to queso llanero, a hard, aged cheese with a salty flavor.
The Atmosphere
Amaizing Arepa Bar is located in an industrial-style space in a corner building at Washington Avenue and 14th Street, a busy intersection with steady foot traffic. The main dining room seats 85, and a VIP area and event space in the back has capacity for 20 to 25 people for meetings or special occasions.
Because Venezuela is on the Caribbean side of South America, it shares plenty of island influences. The Pacheco sisters have fond memories of growing up in the city of Maracay in north-central Venezuela and visiting the beach town of Choroni, where their father was from. Mayra pays tribute to those and other towns on hand-painted signs in the middle of the dining room. They’re a small but important touch that hints at the restaurant’s deeper importance to her family.
“In Venezuela, I was in the graphic design business—totally different from what I do here,” she says. In St. Louis, she earned a new degree and now works as an accountant. While the career change might seem like a stretch, Maria says with a laugh that Mayra has always loved three things: food, design, and numbers. With Amaizing Arepa Bar, she is leveraging them all.
The Team
The Pachecos founded the restaurant’s parent company, Amaizing Cakes Latin Food, in 2019, after starting to sell Venezuelan dishes at markets and festivals in 2018. Their initial offerings were empanadas and tamale-like hallacas that are popular at holiday gatherings. The restaurant’s manager, Douglas Fernandez, has been with the company for two years. “He’s like family at this point,” Mayra says. Fernandez and Maria also head up the catering and events side of the business.
In the early days, Mayra says, it was a challenge explaining to a wider audience where Venezuela was, what it was known for (oil and beauty pageants are among Mayra’s top answers), and the cuisine. But that challenge was also a source of motivation for Mayra—she wanted her son, now age 10, to understand his roots, even though he hasn’t visited Venezuela yet.
The young entrepreneur is already picking up business lessons from his mother and aunt. And he’s quick to explain the dishes to new customers. “We’re spreading our culture around,” Mayra says. “If I show you what my country was like, you can imagine how happy it was and the good life we had.”
