Evanston Lunch Group™ over-ordered at
La Cocininta yesterday. It was all good.
La Cocinita began as a food truck, but even after moving into a brick and mortar location (formerly Greek Fire Grill), it's still a food truck experience. It was fairly crowded for a Wednesday lunch, but the joint was able to handle the nine of us ... in fact, the many dishes we ordered appeared fairly quickly (except for the horchata – they were out, and explained they were in the midst of the 24 hours it takes to make a fresh batch).
I wasn't able to get pix of everything we ordered (and many of the offerings looked pretty similar) but here's a sampling:
The
Carne Asada Patacones used plantains to contain the steak, slaw and cheese.
We also ordered the
Empanadas Trio - chicken, beef and pork. Good luck trying to guess which one this is.
Similarly, we ordered three
tacos – carne aside, braised chicken and pulled pork. All were stuffed with rice and beans, plus purple cabbage slaw and cogito cheese. (Can you guess which one this is?)
But possibly the best reason to visit La Cocinita is for the
arepas, basically small cornmeal-based sandwiches. We ordered El Pabellon ( shredded beef), La Reina Pepiada (avocado chicken salad), EL Puerto, and El Vegano (should be pretty easy to tell what's in the latter two).
Overall, I thought the food was good, and it's great to have a new cuisine in downtown Evanston. It's not a destination; there were no stand-out dishes, and I think the tacos, in particular, were fine, but there are better tacos at places that specialize in tacos (I'm looking forward to Tacos Diablo re-opening in its new building a few blocks away soon). But if you're in the neighborhood, it's worth a visit. If you're planning to share, though, be sure to bring your Swiss Army knife. The plastic knives just don't cut it.
La Cocinita Venezuelan
1625 Chicago Ave
Evanston, IL 60201
(847) 332-1625