Going here was a real treat, and many thanks to the organizing couple for thinking of me and my interest in new ethnic cuisines!
In terms of environment, the most memorable was that there was a shelf of Venezuelan products you can buy and take home, an area set aside for the stage, and a pretty cozy size restaurant - which was problematic once the band started. It really filled up around music time though.
For drinks, I had a field day. I got to sample some Polar Malta, which is basically beer without the fermenting process:

As one fellow diner put it, “it tastes like prune juice”. I’ve never had prune juice, but it’s certainly sour enough to meet my expectations! The ingredients list on the side really shows that it’s like beer: malted barley, hops, water, sugar, carbon dioxide. Weird.
For my encore, I ordered a drink who’s name escapes me:

but that I can describe without exaggeration as “haw flake shake”! By haw flakes, I’m referring to the cheap little paper-rolled sweet candy 1-inch discs found in Chinese stores. It really, really does taste like that, even down to the granules at the bottom!
Somebody ordered appetizers, the Mercadito platter. Delicious! On the left are corn pancakes with white cheese, cachapas - tastes like sweet corn! In the back are empanadas; unfortunately they weren’t sampled with these tastebuds.
The lower right are patacones, fried plantains; tastes like healthy, crunchy, non-salty potato chips (better actually). The centre was a potato/chicken salad, held up by a quad of arepas, fried/baked corn pancakes. Didn’t get to the arepas either
, but I’m confident they’re good.

On the way to my entree, I couldn’t resist and had another, larger order of Cachapas. While I enjoyed it immensely, I did tire of it near the end (didn’t finish!).
For my entree, I had the Pabellon Criollo, or the Venezuelan platter:

where clockwise we have beans, fried plaintains, shredded beef, avocados, and of course rice in the centre. I must confess to only liking the plaintains, the beans, and the avocados. The beef was very salty. I also barely made a dent in this - the second round of Cachapas had proven too much of an undertaking.
My neighbour had the Paisa Platter, or the cholesterol dish as I referred to it:

Sorry for the terrible lighting. At the bottom centre, those are more fried plaintains. Going clockwise, we have sausages (chorizo), bacon, more pork atop beans, avocado, arepa, steak, and the egg on rice in the centre. Good stuff all round, but with me unable to fend off my own entree, I wasn’t able to sample much here.
Lovely place, lovely meal, I look forward to going back some time, and perhaps having the Paella I only slightly sampled. Though definitely before the band starts.