On a recent Saturday night, I was food-truck-hopping in East San Jose when the aroma of charcoal lured me to a small food stand on Alum Rock — a Colombian arepa joint called Salpikitos, it turned out. I felt like I had stumbled into a family’s backyard barbecue. There was an assembly line of cooks. One tended to a simmering pot of speckled quail eggs; another fanned the flames while searing a batch of arepas on the grill. It was nearly midnight and every table was packed with customers chowing down on charred masa cakes and sipping bottles of Colombiana cola.

For research purposes, I ordered the fattest arepa on the menu, the desgranada, which overflowed with beef, corn, plantain, avocado, chicharron and quail eggs skewered on toothpicks. I loved the contrast between the crisp, brittle ma

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