Waca Maya's picture perfect plantains.
AT Waca Maya, the Venezuelan restaurant that opened in Greenwood earlier this year, you can order your cheese completely encased in a corn dough (empanadas), wrapped in a yeasted dough and fried (tequeños), with or without potato inside a pastry dough and fried (pastelitos), with more cheese or various meats inside a split corn cake (arepas), or on a burger (boring).
Additionally, cheese serves as a condiment for the sweet plantains and the plantain and corn fritters (mandocas). The dessert menu has a single item: sweet corn pancake filled with one cheese, topped with another, and finished with plenty of Venezuelan-style nata, a thick, mild, faintly sour cream.
Though Seattle has few Venezuelan restaurants, the ones it has are very good. Arepa Venezuelan Kitchen is a go-to for lunches in the University District, and one of the best eating weekends of my life was when a retreat I attended simply bypassed the Girl Scout camp cafeteria and outsourced all the food to local Venezuelan food truck and restaurant Paparepas.
All of which gives Waca Maya a lot to live up to. It knocked it out of the park like the Wilyer Abreu home run in Venezuela’s World Baseball Classic finals win, which I watched there, over arepas and Maltín.
The pabellón puts the plantains inside the arepa, along with beans, cheese, and shredded beef.
That was my second visit, a required follow-up because, weeks after the first, my older daughter had—not entirely unjustifiably—yet to forgive me for ordering only a single platter of the sweet plantains. The empanadas were excellent; the three-inch-high, overstuffed reina pepiada arepa every bit the avocado-and-chicken queen implied in the name. The creamy cilantro-flecked sauce delivered to each table in a squeeze bottle is plentiful and bright. But we should have ordered more plantains.
I have eaten a lot of plantains in my life. I lived in Ecuador, where the banana cousin is basically a necessity at every meal (along with beans, so many beans). So, I do not say this lightly or without the experience to back it up: Waca Maya cooks an absolutely dead-on perfect sweet plantain.
Each $6.50 platter of six heavily caramelized slices comes with a pile of shredded white cheese and generous bowl of nata. Eaten together, it is a study in the pleasure of contrasts. The two textures of the plantain itself—just crunchy on the outside and infinitely soft inside—layer with the squiggles of shredded cheese and smooth nata. The heat of the plantain blossoms against the cool creaminess of the nata; the sweet fruit against the tinge of tartness from the nata.
Logically, my daughter proposed our return visit should involve three orders of the plantains for the four of us. Thankfully, since her sister was completely distracted by the pelúa arepa, an absolute unit of braised shredded beef, we were able to suffice with two—and a promise to come back again soon for more.