Pensacola’s new Bodegón Sabor Latino is more than a restaurant for 22-year-old Yanela Latif −it’s a dream she has watched stew inside her mother, owner Angelica Latif, for over a decade that has finally come to fruition.
She caught glimpses as a young girl of her mother’s joy in serving up her homemade Venezuelan dishes at Latin festivals around Pensacola. The menus were mainly street food style and easy to eat and carry − like the pinchos (skewered chicken,) empanadillas (fried turnovers inspired by her father’s Puerto Rican heritage) and the sweet, guava cream cheese pastries.
“We just had our little tent, and then the tables, and then we did the food at home and then brought it over…We fell in love with just making the food and selling it. My mom, that was her plan in the future,” Yanela Latif said. “She was talking to people, and then just seeing how everybody was reacting, she felt so happy that everybody was reacting the way that they were.”
While it took years of working hard and saving money, she held tightly to her plan until it was time to put it into action.
“She wanted to start off with a food truck , but God blessed us to have a store. But it did take a really long time to actually get here,” Latif said. “She opened a painting company at first, and then she started working really hard, and then she was able to afford this place here.”
She wasn’t doing it without the help of her family, from the relatives cooking in the back, to Latif and her younger sister, Valery, as the smiling faces up front.
The store at 1449 W. Nine Mile Road Suite 6 doubles as a fast-casual Latin restaurant specializing in Venezuelan cuisine, and a little marketplace for specialty candies and beverages hard to find in the United States. Some of the most notable finds include the Fress Kolita, also known as Frescolita, which is a carbonated soda resembling a Big Red, Maltín Polar, a non-alcoholic beer-like beverage and Tu Chicha, a creamy vanilla rice beverage.
“When I used to go over there to Venezuela (and) I went to just like get a candy or something, they would call it a 'bodega,'” said Latif, explaining the Bodegón part of the restaurant's name, a small market.
Her family’s time in the country is reflected in the store’s décor, from the paintings gifted from Latif's grandfather to the most frequently used saying and expressions in Venezuela displayed in neon lights.
The cozy restaurant hosts an expansive menu combining the worlds of quick street foods and full-out lunch and dinner plates.
Latif hopes the restaurant will feel like coming home for fellow Venezuelans, and an opportunity to experience something new for those who have never tasted Venezuelan cooking.
“You can't really find a lot of my Venezuelan food here. So, we thought it was a great opportunity to bring it,” she said.
She can still picture her favorite lunch plate, the Pabellón Criollo, which is the national dish of Venezuela packed with beef, rice, black beans, plantains and a fried egg.
“That's a very typical plate that's from Venezuela, and I used to love eating it,” she said.
If customers want to create a plate similar, they have a rotating hot bar of meats, rice, beans and sides that can be scooped onto a lunch or dinner plate for a quick meal on the spot.
If you have a few minutes to wait, you can hold out for one of the made-to-order menu items, like a hand-patted empanadas.
So far, the top seller has been the “Patacones De Pollo Y De Carne” or a chicken or beef sandwich that stars two fried plantains that serve as the bread slices of a traditional sandwich. The plantains are perfectly flattened and fried to be firm enough to hold the layers of meat, cheese, toppings and sauces together, but tender to bite into.
According to Latif, you also can’t pass on the cachapas, sweet corn pancakes with a salty cheese filling made with Venezuelan queso de mano. Think crepe-meets-quesadilla for a cheesy, sweet and savory experience.
While they have a compact menu while they get started, they plan on adding more Venezuelan and Latin dishes in time.
“We definitely want to make it bigger…. We want to incorporate other countries, we also want to bring other plates from Venezuela,” she said. “We're just getting started.”
Bodegón Sabor Latino is open from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Monday and Tuesday, closed on Wednesday, open 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, then open again from noon to 6 p.m. on Sunday.
For more updates or information, call the restaurant at 850-542-7006, or follow the restaurant on Facebook .
Hungry for more? Stay up to date on the latest restaurant news by subscribing to our free Pensacola Eats newsletter, delivered to your inbox every Wednesday. Sign up for the newsletter at profile.pnj.com/newsletters/pensacola-eats/
This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: This Pensacola Latin restaurant with Venezuelan flair will take your tastebuds on a journey
Most Popular
Comments / 0