Moar eatin' in Durham.

Moar eatin' in Durham.

There's a lot of legit Central American food in Durham - Mexican, Salvadoran, Guatemalan, Honduran. This was a place that was new since I had lived there and I was all excited to try it.

It's the only Guatemalan sit down place I know of. It is, like many of its relatives, also a store. In addition, it seems to be a family run place with a very few people who speak English. That didn't seem to be a problem even if you didn't speak Spanish, though.

I ended up getting nibbly bits instead of an entree and that worked out great. I was totally stuffed. This place has a whole condiment bar full of different veggies, salsas, sauces, crema, etc. I tried them all and they are all good. I don't think any of them were particularly spicy, but a couple might be if you really don't tolerate spicy. Like you might not want to eat the char-grilled jalapenos or the pickled jalapenos if that's too spicy to your tastebuds.

I got a pache which was filled with chicken - still on the bone (surprise), a tamalito de chipilin (it's a green or an herb), a garnacha, and a pastelito. Plus it comes with what I will ignorantly call the local version of cole slaw (it has a name, I'm just going blank) and some other sauces and stuff.

I really liked the spices/flavors in the various things, esp the chicken in the pache. A pache is basically a tamale but it's made out of potato and cooked in banana leaf. The chipilin didn't seem to have any particular flavor I could describe for you? I mean, it was even milder than something like spinach or chard would be?

I also had a rellenito de manjar out of the case for dessert. Surprise - it's heated and the filling was so hot I burned my mouth on it. Oops. The dough is made out of maduros, or sweet plantains, and it's filled with custard (manjar). Even though I do not have banana hate, I find plantains very rich, esp. the sweet ones. They are ok as chips, but they seem very heavy, starchy and sticky sweet to me otherwise. Heating it just made that more noticeable to me. So tasty, but unless it was the only thing I ate (and was maybe not quite so hot), I probably wouldn't indulge too often.

Anyway, all delicious, all worth it, would do all again. Then again, there's all that other stuff to try. Definitely recommend.

http://el-chapin.com/