El Peñol is the type of place where you know the food is authentic the second you walk in the door. It’s packed with enough patrons to assure its quality, but not overly busy. There’s music with Spanish lyrics playing, and many of the patrons converse and order in Spanish, too.
Tucked off in a setback building slightly off the main drag on Bennington Street in Eastie, this Colombian spot serves up as authentic food as you can get, I later learned from a friend’s girlfriend who was born and raised in Colombia.
My dinner started with one of my favorite foods, fried yuca. El Peñol’s version is a bit thicker cut, incredibly crispy on the outside but softer on the inside, making for a perfectly balanced bite each time.
I went with pollo a la plancha for my entrée, which strayed from the traditional whole chicken breast topped with sauteed onion. Instead, El Peñol, serves the chicken cut in strips and mixes it with onions and peppers. While I prefer maduros, fried sweet plantains, I enjoyed the tostones, fried green plantains. They’re a bit dry on their own but work well with a bite of something more moist, whether it be chicken, beans, or just dipped in some leftover sauce. The meal also came with a small salad, mostly lettuce, and a sizable portion of rice and beans.
And a visit to the restaurant’s Coolidge Corner location, they also have one in Revere, only further validated my Eastie experience. I’m an avid user of the Beli app, so I’ll share what the rating was there, 9.7.
Make sure to follow El Peñol on Instagram for the latest!
Greg Levinsky is a graduate Boston University. His work has appeared in The Boston Globe, Detroit Free Press and several outlets in Maine. He can be reached at [email protected]
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