San Jose’s New Late-Night Hot Spot Serves Smoky, Charcoal-Grilled Arepas

On a recent Saturday night, I was food-truck-hopping in East San Jose when the aroma of charcoal lured me to a small food stand on Alum Rock — a Colombian arepa joint called Salpikitos, it turned out. I felt like I had stumbled into a family’s backyard barbecue. There was an assembly line of cooks. One tended to a simmering pot of speckled quail eggs; another fanned the flames while searing a batch of arepas on the grill. It was nearly midnight and every table was packed with customers chowing down on charred masa cakes and sipping bottles of Colombiana cola.

For research purposes, I ordered the fattest arepa on the menu, the desgranada, which overflowed with beef, corn, plantain, avocado, chicharron and quail eggs skewered on toothpicks. I loved the contrast between the crisp, brittle masa and the creamy filling. It was one of the tastiest arepas I’ve come across in the Bay Area.

Edward Tovar and Vivian Sanchez opened the San Jose location of Salpikitos last December, but the business was born in Villavicencio, Colombia, in 2008. Tovar’s brother, Carlos Kaleet, started out selling arepas from a street stall and eventually expanded to a brick-and-mortar location in Villavicencio and another in Bogota. Tovar and Sanchez worked alongside Kaleet back in Colombia and got his blessing to continue the family business when they moved to the United States three years ago. Over the last six months, they’ve transformed Salpikitos from a simple food stall that had a few scattered tables to something more like an outdoor restaurant, complete with a walled-off, fully built-out kitchen.

Of course, the food stand’s specialty is its arepas, which are a kind of masa cake that originated in Colombia and Venezuela. There’s a growing number of Colombian and Venezuelan food businesses in San Jose that make these stuffed corn cakes, but almost always on an indoor griddle. What makes the arepas at Salpikitos special is that they’re grilled over charcoal to impart a smoky flavor and a light char. Plus, the cooks make the masa from scratch using white corn kernels. “Before we had an electric machine,” says Sanchez, “but right now, we’re grinding it by hand. It takes about two and a half hours for the thirty pounds of masa we make per day.” The arepas are sturdy enough to encase an incredible amount of filling and have a subtle corn flavor that serves as a blank slate for a diverse cast of ingredients.

The couple spent years studying the recipes at the original Salpikitos to replicate the flavors as precisely as possible. “The spices, amounts and ingredients are all the same we used in Colombia,” says Sanchez. There are over a dozen varieties of stuffed arepas on the menu. The top seller is the aforementioned desgranada. Sanchez’s personal favorite is the shrimp arepa filled with gooey cheese, tomatoes, red onions, avocado and paprika.

On the other hand, Tovar says his favorite dish isn’t a stuffed arepa at all. It’s the choripiña — a plain, unstuffed arepa topped with melted cheese and chunks of macerated pineapple, and served with a grilled Colombian chorizo link on top. All of the flavors come together incredibly well — the smoke-infused corn flavor of the grilled masa, the tart sweetness of the pineapple, the richness of the cheese, and the savoriness of the spice-infused chorizo. It’s also just a fun eating experience, since you can wrap the arepa around the sausage and bite into the whole thing as if it were a large stuffed taco.

Tovar and Sanchez say their menu is identical to the one at the Salpikitos locations in Colombia, so I was surprised to see dishes inspired by American and Mexican cuisine. The rancher burger arepa is filled with traditional burger toppings along with the addition of corn and quail eggs. Those two aren’t ingredients I would ever typically consider adding to my burger, but I can confirm that the combination works exceptionally well, especially with the hard sear the beef patty gets on the grill. The Mexicana, on the other hand, features beans, jalapeño, tomato, avocado, cheese and meat with a tangy red salsa.

When asked about their favorite menu item, every Salpikitos employee recommended something different. In other words, it’s the type of place where there’s something for everyone.

Salpikitos isn’t visible from the street, and it’s tucked directly in the middle of the food truck park. Which is to say, the place isn’t easy to come across accidentally, yet the tables fill up nearly every night of the week, and the owners say they sell around 150 arepas a day. It’s become a popular late-night spot for diners in the mood for Colombian barbecue who gather near the fire as the cold night air fills with smoke and chatter.

“We feel customers come here because of the flavor of the arepa,” says Sanchez. “Customers tell us the flavor is unique because of the charcoal. It’s the essence of the arepa.”

Salpikitos is open Monday through Friday 7 p.m.–12 a.m. and Saturday to Sunday 5 p.m.–midnight at 1948 Alum Rock Ave. in San Jose.