The Manhattan Times

Inwood’s most popular parking space is wherever the Patacon Pisao truck is parked

by Adam Garrett-Clark

A few days after The New York Times wrote about the patacones of Patacon Pisao, a food truck that stations itself on W. 202nd Street just around the corner of 9th Avenue, owner Lilliana Velasquez, said she suddenly started seeing “Americanos” waiting in line.

Velasquez was grateful for the press, she said, but the small truck, manned by less than a handful of employees, doesn’t need much help drawing a crowd.

Despite an out of the way location, and only being open between 7 p.m. and 6 a.m., the truck has a constant huddle of people in front of it. Velasquez serves Venezuelan fast food bent to the tastes of its primarily Dominican audience. The truck’s unique cuisine may someday be renamed “Dominican fast food.”

On a recent Monday, just as the restaurant on wheels opened, it has already amassed a hungry crowd outside.

Teenager Gus Rodriguez and his friends sit in a double-parked car in front of the truck urgently attacking their foiled patacones. Rodriguez said he comes at least once a week since his brother told him about it a few months ago. When he first tried the patacon, a saucy sandwich made with pressed, fried plantains instead of bread, “I was in heaven,” he said. “It’s better than a chimi.”

The Venezuelan sandwich is strange even to some Venezuelans. It is only eaten in the northwest of the country mostly in the state of Zulia where many plantains are grown. Outside of Zulia, most people have never heard of it.

Yet with its success in Inwood it may someday supplant the favorite Chimichuri as the next “Dominican hamburger.”

Rodriguez and his friends said the truck’s popularity almost creates a scene of its own on the street, which makes it fun to hang out and people-watch. Many customers order a few palitos, gooey cheese sticks, which they eat with generous portions of a special pink sauce while they wait for their orders.

From across the boroughs and into New Jersey, word of the patacon has spread, said Velasquez. She plans to eventually expand to a store in Queens where the extra space will allow her to prepare food for both locations. She is also considering opening a truck in the Bronx, based on customer requests.

Just a few blocks west on Dyckman Street, the restaurant Cachapas y Mas is an offshoot of the truck's success. The storefront restaurant also serves patacons. The owner, Larry Villalobos, who opened Velasquez’ truck and later sold it, has another truck of his own in the Bronx and also has plans to expand to other parts of the city.

Ironically, when the idea of selling these strange Venezuelan concoctions out of an old chimichurri truck first came about four years ago, everyone thought it was loco.

After emigrating from Venezuela, Villalobos quickly found refuge in the Dominican community of Brooklyn where he made many friends working first in a bodega and then as a taxi driver. Realizing the unbreakable bond between the Dominican culture and the plantain, he knew this regional sandwich would be a hit.

His daughter, Ivette Villalobos, remembers him talking about some day opening a restaurant, along with a number of the other schemes he was always dreaming up, but she never really believed him.

“He always talked about things, but never actually did them,” she said.

But Villalobos never gave up on this idea. At home he began preparing various batches of patacones and experimental sauces for his family to try.

Eventually he invited one of his regular passengers, an older Dominican woman named Irma, to his house to try some of his patacones.

Then one day, Villalobos announced to the family he was no longer a cab driver. He saw a listing in the local Spanish paper about an old chimichurri truck for sale in Northern Manhattan and he bought it. But he had to sell his cab to have enough money to pay for it.

“We all were like: ‘you’re crazy,’” Ivette said.

Locals in the area warned him that the last few owners closed soon after opening in the sparsely-populated locale. But Villalobos was confidant. “I said: ‘Listen, I’m gonna sell something different.’”

He opened the truck four years ago to the day – August 13, 2005. Back then, area residents were skeptical of the strange items on the menu.

He and his family had to get out onto the street and explain what the food was to customers, giving out many of those first patacones for free. His guarantee – If you don’t like it you don’t pay – eventually paid off.

Once the crowds from Umbrella, the nightclub across the street, began to take notice the word spread fast.

Villalobos eventually sold his truck to a business partner and opened Cachapas y Mas, where he is able to offer even more elements of his country’s cuisine to Northern Manhattan.

Now his daughter calls him a genius, and people have approached him with plans for a franchise.

There’s a saying in Spanish, Villalobos said: “Si no rieskas, no ganas ni pierdes.” If you don’t try you don’t lose, but you don’t win either.

The Manhattan Times is the bilingual newspaper of Washington Heights and Inwood.