South American eatery

Today: Latin restaurant

Where: El Arepazo

4139 S. 1785 West, inside the Carriage Square shopping center, in Taylorsville.

Language: Spanish

Hours: Monday-Thursday, noon to 10 p.m. Friday-Saturday, noon to midnight. Closed Sundays.

What to expect: A restaurant serving Venezuelan, Colombian and Ecuadorian food, such as "teque-o": dough rolled around white cheese and fried.

TAYLORSVILLE - Even though Joaquin Blanco hasn't seen his "gordita" in three years, he often feels closer to her when he visits a tiny Venezuelan restaurant here.

Blanco, who hasn't visited Venezuela since he moved to the United States five years ago, misses his mother's homemade "arepas" and "teque os." He's Latino, but his heart doesn't crave tortillas or salsa.

At El Arepazo, he says he's found the taste of his mother's cooking. A place where he feels like family. And an escape from speaking English.

"After I leave here, I feel better, more relaxed," says the 26-year-old Taylorsville resident. "I feel like I just had a bit of my country."

For Blanco and other Latinos, El Arepazo is a place where they feel comfortable speaking Spanish and don't have to worry about people looking at them differently for doing so.

More than 75,000 Salt Lake County residents - or about 10 percent of the population - speak Spanish at home, according to 2000 census data compiled by the Modern Language Association.

In ZIP code 84119, home to El Arepazo, one out of four people speak a language other than English at home.

Figures are not available on what countries Spanish-speaking people living in the county come from. But Latinos from South America say it's frustrating when Utahns assume they are Mexican and know everything about the culture. They say they often have to tell people that they are from another country that has its own history, traditions, foods and Spanish slang.

Blanco, who moved from Idaho to Utah three months ago, says people usually mistake him for a Mexican and will ask him about that country's holidays or where they can find the most authentic food.

"It doesn't matter to me, but I have to explain I'm from Venezuela," he says.

Blanco says he's open to teaching friends and co-workers about his Venezuelan culture. To do that, he often takes them to El Arepazo, where they can try "arepas," a flat, fried corn-flour patty stuffed with shredded beef, shredded chicken, pork or ham and cheese.

El Arepazo, which opened in March 2004, has Venezuela's yellow, blue and red flag hanging from its window. Roughly 90 percent of the customers here are Latino and more than half of them are Venezuelan, says Luis Meza, the restaurant's owner.

Inside, there are only six tables, a dozen stools along a counter and 10 folding chairs, in case more seats are needed when it gets crowded on the weekends. A hammock hangs over the counter and a yellow "Caracas Leones" jersey, from a Venezuelan baseball team, is posted on the wall. Spanish music plays as Meza takes orders at the counter and children run around the restaurant. His wife, Irma, cooks the dishes as they're ordered.

Meza, who moved from Ecuador to Utah in 1999, bought and started running the business earlier this year. He says he thought it would be a good way to meet new friends and share a variety of Latino cultures through food.

El Arepazo specializes in dishes from Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador. Here, he says, customers will get white rice and black beans, not Mexican red rice and pinto beans. They will not be served tortillas or chips and salsa. The dishes are not spicy, but hot sauce can be served on the side.

"Americans think Latino means Mexican," says Meza, who ran a small factory in Ecuador for 25 years. "I would like the Americans to know we're here. They need to know another option for food."

With more and more Latinos moving to Utah, Meza says he hopes his restaurant serves as a place where people feel comfortable speaking their native language. He knows how hard it is to move here and not speak English. Sometimes, he says customers come in to eat alone but are really just looking for company. Meza, who mostly speaks Spanish, often chats with them about how and why they came to the United States.

"They come here because they want to talk to someone in Spanish," he says.

Monica Pozo, a 42-year-old West Jordan resident, recently enjoyed a thin steak, white rice and red beans - a traditional dish in her homeland of Ecuador - at El Arepazo while talking with her 22-year-old son in Spanish. Pozo, who moved to Utah nine years ago, also speaks English, but prefers Spanish. She says she comes to El Arepazo because she feels welcome here. "For me, this is better," she says, drinking "morocho," a rice-milk drink. "It's like if you're home."

For Blanco, home is about 3,500 miles away from Salt Lake City.

He and his wife are raising their two young children here, but the rest of his family lives in Caracas, Venezuela's capital city. Blanco, a Boy Scouts of America district executive, says he hopes to someday take his new family to visit his boyhood neighborhood, the place he still calls home.

Until then, eating arepas at El Arepazo is the closest his kids will ever get to growing up in Venezuela, he says.

"It makes me proud that my kids like the food I ate growing up," Blanco says. "I tell them, 'Arepas' will make you strong, it will make you better.' "

jsanchez@sltrib.com

El Arepazo

Some menu items

* "Arepa": a flat, fried corn-flour patty stuffed with shredded beef, shredded chicken, pork or ham and cheese like a sandwich

* "Patac n relleno": Like an arepa, but made with fried plantains as the bread instead of the corn flour patty

* "Empanada": a fried, corn flour dough stuffed with choice of meat in a half-moon shape that could fit in the palm of your hand

* "Tome Tropica," a strawberry soda from Ecuador

* "Postobon," an apple soda from Colombia