In the space formerly occupied by the Tenth Muse, the Cruzao Arepa Bar has renovated and reopened in a rapid business turnover. I’ve been watching the space develop and on Sunday stopped in for lunch. I ordered a long macchiato and a chicken and avocado arepa, and spoke with one of the Venezualan owners.
The arepa and salad ($9, above) and what it looks like inside (below). The shredded chicken and minced avocado with mayonnaise was delicious! The coffee is good too. There’s egg and bean ones for breakfast and a variety of meat or vegetarian ones for lunch.
The formerly dark interior has been replaced by a light bright space with lots of bright colour. It’s feels far more inviting than the Tenth Muse ever was. They’ll be staying open late on Friday and Saturday nights for mojitos and they have Facebook and Twitter too.
The Cruzao Arepa Bar is across the road from Juanita’s latin cafe, another favourite of mine, and is a great addition to Brunswick St. The owners are extremely chatty and friendly and I’ll be back soon to try more arepas!
3 August 2010 at 2:08 pm
I must admit having a little panic when I started reading this – I thought you’d trumped me on Sonido, another new South American place doing arepas in Fitzroy. It was with some relief that I realised it was a different place – it’s a rare moment when we get to blog something in Fitzroy before you’re onto it.
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3 August 2010 at 2:11 pm
Hi Michael, I just commented on your Sonido post – was aware it was there but had never seen it open until yesterday morning when a shoot was going on – Offspring perhaps? Sounds like a great place and I will get there soon. Congratulations on getting there first!
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3 August 2010 at 2:18 pm
Yeah, probably Offspring – they’ve shot a lot of stuff in Radio as well. I’m looking forward to heading down Brunswick Street to try out Cruzao as well – it looks like arepas are the new black.
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3 August 2010 at 11:46 pm
Shooting everwhere! I wandered through Fitzroy early yesterday evening on my way home to Brunswick and passed a shoot going on just off Gertrude St then, when I got home, there was a shoot going on at the end of my street! Bloody ‘Offspring’ too, apparently (unbeknownst to me) they’d stuck flyers through our letter boxes in advance to advise residents that they’d be shining stupidly big lights and wearing high-vis waistcoats just in case we stumbled upon it and thought it was an outbreak of Ebola or something. Dunno why they chose my wee dead-end street though…?
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4 August 2010 at 12:13 am
I’m sure your little street has character :-) I’ve seen a lot of shooting too – Gertrude St this week and Kerr St in weeks past. I’ll be interested to see what it looks like on screen!
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22 September 2010 at 12:49 pm
I had friends down from Sydney so decided to go to Cruzao last Saturday for lunch. I had been wanting to go there for a while. Unfortunately, we went away feeling very disappointed and will not be returning.
It was a reasonable cold day on Sat and the door was open. We asked the waitress if she would mind closing the door as we were cold. She looked annoyed and clearly did not want to close the door but reluctantly she did so.
Coffee’s and hot chocolates were ordered but they took a very long time to get to us and when they did they were cold and my saucer was full of spilt coffee. There was only 1 other person in the place and at least 3 staff.
Food wise we ordered a Medley and Arepas. The waitress arrived with the medley, put it on the table and left. Each of the items in the medley is fried so aside from shape they all look the same. The waitress made no attempt to explain. We had to call her back and reluctantly she described the items.
The flavours were unexciting and very similar to each other.
The Arepas took about an hour to arrive (I know they supposedly cook them to order but how long does it take to do 4 Arepas?). Overall the Arepas were good. I had the shredded beef Arepa and although the flavour was good it was impossible to actually take a bite of the Arepa and filling together because the beef was impossible to chew through.
We experienced none of the friendliness ourselves, but when hipster friends of the staff arrived they were treated very differently.
As locals we have many choices and do not have to patronise places that do not even manage the basics.
So, off to Sonido and see if the atmosphere is an improvement on Cruzao
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22 September 2010 at 1:02 pm
I had a long wait too the second time I went when it was also not so busy. I’ve been to both Cruzao and Sonido twice now. I like the food at both, but I think the service at Sonido has been better so far. I’m sure both will get better with experience.
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