If you’ve designed a adore affair with arepas, the deliciously adaptable Venezuelan corn flatbreads – which are now accessible at eating places which includes Whenever Arepa at Zócalo Food Park, Arepanita’s Cafe in Waukesha, Arepa’s Place in Brookfield and La Caribena on the South Aspect – there’s wonderful information on the horizon.

That is mainly because Anytime Arepa house owners Maria Salas and Leo Farfan, have signed on to be tenants at the forthcoming 3rd Road Market Hall, a food items hall which will open up its doorways with a roster of tenants that contains anchor tenant Dairyland Old Fashioned Hamburgers & Frozen Custard, Mid-Way Bakery, Supernova Espresso & Doughnuts, at least two plant-centered sellers, four hawker stall tenants and a handful of a lot more suppliers that will be announced incredibly quickly.

And if you’ve by no means experimented with the delicious arepas that Farfan and Salas give at their foods trailer at Zócalo Food Park, 636 S. 6th St., it is significant time you gave it a try. 

Not only are they delectable Venezuelan comfort and ease food stuff at its finest, they are filled to the brim with the adore, passion and willpower of a relatives who traveled in excess of 2,500 miles to set up a new everyday living for them selves.



Farfan and Salas, natives of Venezuela, came to the U.S. with their two sons by using Florida in 2015. Like so many immigrants, they hoped to begin a organization advertising standard Venezuelan food items. But, immediately after obtaining the Florida industry flooded with other sellers attempting to do the similar, they heeded the assistance of a longtime close friend, who beckoned them to Milwaukee, a sector with much less Venezuelan immigrants and buyers eager to try out new objects.

Farfan claims they begun with a foodstuff product they realized: the arepa, a corn-centered flatbread which is versatile adequate that it is generally eaten for breakfast, with lunch or meal and even as a late evening snack (that’s why the identify Anytime Arepa). 

“We seemed to use our food as an interpreter,” says Salas, “To teach individuals about ourselves and our culture. Arepas are our each day food in Venezuela. Every spouse and children tends to make arepas in the morning, and you can odor them grilling. Each and every loved ones has their personal recipes for the filling.”

With the enable of their teenage sons, the husband and spouse duo released their business enterprise promoting at community farmers marketplaces. They commenced with the Harbor Sector in Kenosha in 2018, serving selections like arepas loaded with common pulled brisket seasoned with a sofrito paste created with onions, crimson peppers and garlic.


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“The flavor of our shredded beef is the flavor I try to remember from household,” claims Farfan. “It’s the flavor of our nation. Our spouse and children. Our small business.”


The flavors, states Farfan, also connected them to their dwelling, a put which – all too usually – felt worlds away. 

“The avocado salsa normally reminds me of when I was a boy and we went to the seaside,” he states. “And we had been in the drinking water all working day and we were being so hungry. And then we’d all try to eat the arepas and they tasted so superior and fresh…”

Recollections are also wrapped into the Salas family’s recipe for gradual-cooked pork, which is marinated in citrus juices, wine and herbs including oregano and then braised until finally succulently tender.

“In Venezuela, we would put together the pork principally for Christmas,” Salas states. “My father would put together the pork butt with the bone in and the overall developing would odor so delicious” 


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Farfan smiles and nods his head in Salas’ way. “Maria places magic into our family recipes,” he states. “The pork is my father-in-law’s recipe. But Maria took that recipe and made it flavor so excellent.”

With loads of aid from their delightful choices, Farfan says company took off, slowly but definitely.

“We began from scratch,” claims Farfan. “We experienced a tent and a grill. And our two sons worked with us. We started off smaller, hoping for the greatest. At the time, very couple persons knew what an arepa was, so we spent a lot of time educating. Thankfully, the response was pretty positive.”

But by October, Farfan and Salas discovered them selves dealing with a Wisconsin inevitability: the fall and wintertime weather. So, they scrambled, on the lookout for indoor venues where they could keep on offering their arepas. They settled on the indoor market at Milaeger’s, and – after some research – signed up as a seller for Fooda, a business enterprise which brings catered lunches to company clientele.

“Working with Fooda saved our everyday living,” he says. “And we were being equipped to journey all about serving lunch to massive businesses together with GE and Aurora Health care.”



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The next summertime (2019), Salas and Farfan experienced a probability assembly with Sean Phelan of Phelan Advancement at the Shorewood Farmers Current market. Phelan informed them about the Zócalo Food items Park on which he’d partnered with Jesus Gonzalez and invited them to market their arepas there as a visitor vendor. They acknowledged.

That conclusion, says Farfan, transformed every little thing.

By January, Phelan and Gonzalez approached them once again, asking if they’d be fascinated in collaborating in the Zócalo incubator method, which would supply them with a foodstuff truck (briefly), company mentorship and a a person 12 months agreement at the foodstuff park. 



The few agreed, and in April of 2020, they commenced advertising their arepas on a comprehensive-time basis at Zócalo Foods Park. The timing wasn’t best, admits Farfan, noting that they began with the plan just immediately after the shutdown for the COVID-19 pandemic went into effect. At first, their profits plummeted, he says, and it was hard for at least the very first six months. But they persisted.

“We ended up so fortunate,” suggests Farfan. “We already experienced CashDrop in put, and that was a lifesaver. Folks adapted swiftly and it allowed us to do enterprise. For us it was crucial to give our customers solutions. So we also signed up for delivery services which include Try to eat Road, DoorDash and GrubHub. And that was what helped us to get via the pandemic.”

Farfan and Salas were being also the recipients of essential grant funding from the Town of Milwaukee, which they are applying to buy their own trailer.

“We had been so fortunate to have their help,” says Farfan. “And we are grateful, so we are investing that money back into the metropolis. We’ll be buying our very own trailer, so we can give back the Zócalo trailer for another person else to use. We really like that it will give another entrepreneur the option to try out their thought like we were being ready to do.”

Whenever Arepa will occupy a 400 sq. foot stall found just to the west of the foodstuff hall’s bar. The place will attribute a wooden counter, Farfan states, which pays homage to the wood counter they built to use underneath their tent when they begun providing arepas at the Harbor Marketplace.

“We want it to be welcoming,” he states, “And we are making it to be open up so that people today are ready to see how the arepas are designed.Our foods is extremely fresh and I believe when you encounter that, you want to see how we make it.”




The menu is presently underneath advancement, says Farfan, but will include present-day menu offerings which include beef, pork, hen and vegetable arepas, along with the breakfast arepas they serve at the regional marketplaces. 

But there will also be new choices, which include 4 or 5 new arepa choices. Amid them is a Venezuelan typical: the reina pepiada (also regarded as the Queen arepa) stuffed with shredded rooster, new avocado and mayonnaise. It is an arepa reported to be named in homage to Susana Dujim, who gained the Miss Globe pageant in 1955.

Salas states she will also be making Venezuelan empanadas, a fried treat manufactured with arepa dough that is filled, folded into a 50 percent-moon form, sealed and deep-fried. Attendees can also glance ahead to desserts, like tres leches cake.

Farfan claims that the shift to the foods corridor will enable the loved ones to grow their business, which they started as a usually means of survival. 

“Anytime Arepa is the final result of a want for achievements, to make a residing,” claims Farfan. “But it also comes with a motivation to assistance our family members in Venezuela. My mom is there, my in-legal guidelines are there, and we function so that they can have a superior lifetime. We also want to support and support other corporations in our community.”

Farfan says they owe their success to so lots of persons, but most importantly their consumers.

“It feels so great to be so appreciated listed here when we are so much away from exactly where we ended up born,” claims Farfan. “It’s unbelievable. And we are so excited.”