The ‘Curvy Queen’ of Venezuelan Cuisine

If you’re looking for a handheld meal in Venezuela, one dish reigns supreme: la Reina Pepiada, or “the curvy queen.” It’s the country’s signature take on its staple food, the arepa. A creamy chicken salad in a crispy cornmeal pancake, it’s undeniably delicious. And it tells a distinctly Venezuelan story: one of indigenous peoples, migration, and a beauty; of rising up, falling down, and finding new homes all across the globe.

“Every arepera has Reina Pepiada,” says Irena Stein, a Venezuelan-American chef and author of the cookbook Arepa: Classic & Contemporary Recipes for Venezuela’s Daily Bread. When Stein lived in Caracas, the nation’s capital, from 1974 to 1980, people would fill the areperas, or arepa bars, at all hours. Some people would end up there at the end of the night, dressed to the nines. And families would also whip up Reina Pepiadas for casual meals at home.

In Kissimmee, Florida, the arepa has become a versatile staple. It’s served alongside espresso and Cuban sandwiches at pan-Latin Express Cafe; stuffed with bacon, eggs, and sausage at Susana’s Cafe; and at Venezuelan–Puerto Rican Pa’ Pikar Latin Grill, filled with chicken salad and avocado in the famous Reina Pepiada. About half of the Venezuelan-American population lives in the state.

What exactly is in this dish that has conquered palates all over the world? At its base is a cornmeal patty cooked on a griddle, and ideally finished in an oven, until crispy on the outside and soft on the inside.

Anthropologists estimate that people in Venezuela and Colombia have been eating arepas for thousands of years, since long before Europeans arrived. The Cumanagato people, indigenous to the Caribbean coast of what is now Venezuela, used the word “erepa” to refer to corn. Early conquistadors witnessed Indigenous people in South America eating flat corn cakes that they would toast on a hot clay surface called a budare. This staple survived to become the basis of both the Colombian and Venezuelan diets.

Venezuelan arepas are thick and stuffed with fillings, so they constitute meals in and of themselves. The Venezuelan writer Alejandro Puyana reported that before the 2014 crisis that crippled Venezuela’s economy, the average Venezuelan ate 66 pounds of cornmeal flour per year, amounting to about two arepas every day of the year.

The birth of La Reina Pepiada

La Reina Pepiada came on the scene in the 1950s, as Venezuela was experiencing rapid growth and change. In Caracas, the Álvarez family operated one of the country’s first areperas, El Chance, before opening a second restaurant, El Centro Criollo de Nutrición Hermanos Alvarez, in an area of the city near a famous nightclub. Revelers would devour their arepas after a night of partying, and word spread quickly about their delicious food. Many of the era’s famous writers and entertainers would dine there.

In 1955, a 19-year old woman named Susana Duijm became the first Latin American to win the Miss World Competition. The victory was all the more significant because Duijm, born to a Surinamese Jewish father and a Venezuelan mother, was not from the upper class, unlike the Miss Venezuelas before her.

As the story goes, the Álvarezes seized the moment of Duijm’s win and, soon after her victory, sat one of their daughters on a throne at the restaurant, dressed up to look like Miss World. A man passing by asked what the costume meant. When they told him that she was dressed as Susana Duijm, the man responded, “But I’m the father of Susana! I’ll bring her here.”

A couple of days later, Abraham Duijm returned with Susana, and the restaurant prepared a special dish just for the beauty queen: a toasted arepa stuffed with shredded chicken, mayonnaise, avocado, and peas. The Álvarez family named it Reina Pepiada, and the rest is history.

In that same decade, one more change occurred that cemented Reina Pepiada in Venezuelan cuisine. When the Álvarez brothers opened up shop, the only way to prepare the dough for making arepas was from scratch. That meant removing the corn kernels from a cob, soaking them, then mashing them in a pilón, a wooden mortar and pestle, to remove their skins and grind them down, before adding water and salt to make dough. It was hard work that was usually performed by the women of a household.

In 1954, Venezuelan engineer Luis Caballero Mejías came up with a way to de-skin, grind, and dehydrate corn into a flour that could be quickly made into arepa dough with a little salt and water. The now-ubiquitous corn flour brand Harina P.A.N. launched in 1960. Like dishwashers or washing machines, processed corn flour greatly reduced the burden of labor in Venezuelan households, and it made arepas far more accessible for restaurants and home cooks. Now, the vast majority of Venezuelan cooks use Harina P.A.N., although some people still make traditional arepas with freshly ground corn, or maiz pilado.

José Alicandu, a psychology student and trained chef who lives in Barquisimeto, recalls that he learned to make Reina Pepiada “through my culture, and, I’d say, with my family.” His family members would regularly buy avocados at the market, wait for them to ripen, cook a chicken for one meal, and use the leftover meat for Reina Pepiada.

“I think it’s a meal that’s easy to make and that leaves you feeling satisfied,” Alicandu says. “It’s nutritious; it has protein, and healthy fats. If you want, you can take out the mayonnaise and put in yogurt.”

And it’s delicious. The combination of mayonnaise, avocado, and chicken creates a textural contrast that “totally stimulates the tongue,” Alicandu says. “It’s special.”

La Reina in diaspora

Alicandu was living in Colombia with his sister when he published a recipe for the Reina Pepiada on the German cooking website Kitchen Stories. “Sometimes, we missed our mom’s cooking,” he recalls, adding that, though there were arepas in Colombia, they were “very different” from Venezuelan ones.

Migrants abroad have turned to the arepa not only as a source of comfort, but as a source of income, Stein said. “​​When you go abroad and you don’t know anyone, and you need to survive, what do you do?” she asked.

Stein wrote her arepa cookbook because she wanted to document the Venezuelan diaspora, offer displaced Venezuelans a taste of home, and give transplanted Venezuelans a way to share their culture with their neighbors. While doing research, she heard stories of people combining arepas with local flavors from their adopted homes. Stein calls the arepa “a very kind ambassador” for Venezuelans abroad, because it can be adapted to many food cultures.

Make your own Reina Pepiada

If you want to, you can make a good Reina Pepiada without much fuss. At its core, it’s simple: shredded chicken, mayonnaise, and avocado, stuffed into an arepa. The original served in the Alvarez family’s bar also contained peas, but most recipes these days omit them. Plenty of cooks add their own variations, including cilantro, lime, and sweet peppers.

The arepa is the most important part. “It has to be very crispy,” says Stein. “That’s the most important element of the Reina Pepiada, or any arepa.” In a good arepa, a crispy outside yields to a soft, slightly chewy inside. She emphasizes that, after grilling the arepas initially, it is “extremely important to put them in the oven until they puff up.” She suggests making a few rounds of arepas for practice before stuffing them and making them into a full meal.

When it comes to the filling, there’s a little more flexibility—think of all of the different things that can go in a good chicken salad. Stein says that the condiments in the filling, including salt and pepper, help create contrasting flavors, and separate a bland arepa from an exciting one. Stein’s and Egui’s recipe for Reina Pepiada, for example, includes homemade mayonnaise, cilantro, diced onion, a sweet red pepper called ají dulce, and avocado layered into the filling three different ways.

The method of cooking the chicken makes a difference, too. “If you use charcoal-grilled chicken, it’s a smoky flavor, and it’s crispy while still being moist,” Alicandu said. When he was growing up, his family would use leftover boiled or roasted chicken for reina pepiada. They both work.

“If you have leftover Reina Pepiada, you can make a real salad,” Stein said, “with lettuce at the bottom, and you can eat it with a good piece of bread.” And the queen lives on.