G.A. Benton
“Talk about quaint,” I believed even though pulling into a parking ton and exiting a occupied, not particularly scenic stretch of Route 23 just south of the town of Delaware.
What induced my observation was a lovable very little “blink and you will skip it” log cabin that seemed largely disregarded by most of the automobiles buzzing by in the continuous stream of rapid-going site visitors. I guess the other motorists experienced blinked.
At the time within the prefab cabin — which appeared to be close to the dimension of a two-auto garage — I encountered a campground-evoking but exceptionally tidy room with a wooden flooring, wooden walls, two little picnic-design and style tables, two repurposed card tables and a compact pot-bellied stove. Oh yeah, and a prolonged menu of Venezuelan avenue-foodstuff classics.
Welcome to the eatery quaintly named the Porch Ohio.
Website visitors to the Porch, which celebrated its two-calendar year anniversary in December, can be expecting to be welcomed again with a warm handle from Mariangela Jimenez, who operates the Venezuelan mom-and-pop restaurant with her partner, Lenin Lopez.
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The menu they supply is populated with products, these kinds of as empanadas and arepas, that were at the time unusual in the space but no for a longer period are. But it also advertises a dish which continues to be hard to discover in Central Ohio and that, in addition to being scarce, is so comforting and delightful that it is practically really worth building the trip on its personal: cachapa pork ($16).
Cachapas — like their North American cousins, johnny cakes — are essentially corn-centered pancakes. A few cachapa dishes are available at the Porch, and every functions a puffy yet sizeable pancake that has a fantastic toasted-corn taste accentuated by corn kernels. The yellow flatbreads are also attractive, resembling dark-spotted omelets.
The cachapa in the cachapa pork was folded and loaded like an omelet, as well. Its killer, pig-out innards such as mozzarella-like “handmade cheese” (Venezuelan queso de mano), nata (feel cream cheese meets clotted cream), feta-like cheese and, spilling out in abundance, fantastic nuggets of deep-fried pork.
Eleven arepas constitute the bulk of the menu. They are generously overstuffed — I would not endorse consuming a person with your hands except if you are putting on a wetsuit — mainly because they are much more about the bountiful fillings than the moderate, grilled white cornmeal discs utilised like overwhelmed sandwich bread.
I tried out two: the arepa asada with hen ($13), packed with kebab-style thigh meat, cheese, pico de gallo and mayo-based home cilantro sauce and the arepa pabellon ($13), loaded with pot roast-type beef, fried sweet plantains and hearty black beans. I’d order possibly arepa once again in a heartbeat.
Far more of that fantastic beef, Venezuelan-fashion cheese and pico de gallo turned up involving sheets of fried plantain — together with deli ham, melted American cheese, lettuce and cilantro sauce — in the irresistibly more than-the-major shredded beef patacon ($15 a patacon resembles a sandwich assembled with plantains as a substitute of bread). While the plantains were oily and sweet relatively than unripe (unripe eco-friendly plantains are advertised and are a lot more standard), that patacon was nevertheless a very good-tasting and significant meal.
The mozzarella-adhere-like tequenos (5 for $12) in the same way could’ve been fried at larger warmth to make them crispier and a lot less oily. But who can resist soothing melted cheese enclosed inside of golden-brown pastry?
The frying approach was on target with the Porch’s empanadas. An buy ($12) introduced three significant hand pies whose crisp and handsome pastry shells surrounded a basic but pleasant, if somewhat salty, floor-beef filling.
Here’s a short tale about dessert. Right after sampling the wiggly quesillo ($5.50) — a flan-like confection whose identify derives from “queso” due to the fact quesillo has cheese-like pores — I drove again out to the Porch the following day to verify that the eggy custard with an fantastic caramel sauce was once more as excellent upon even further reflection. Verdict: It was, but additional investigate is still quite, incredibly needed.
The Porch Ohio
5808 Columbus Pike, Lewis Middle
740-201-8761
