The Pabellón Criollo

A couple of weeks ago, i went to this place called "El Budare de La Castellana" here in Caracas city, Budare is the name for a metal cooking plate that's usually used to heat the Arepas (a corn meal patty, used as bread) , and La Castellana is a zone in Caracas.
They usually have a wide variety of typical venezuelan dishes and I was in the mood for something along those lines.
Instead of having the usual Arepa (of which I will talk some more in a future post) or the very tasty and favorite of mine Cachapa (see one of my first posts on the blog here), I decided to take on  Venezuela's National Dish: The Pabellón Criollo.
I asked around what Pabellón stands for and some people told me is a rather large gathering and some other people told me it was something else and so on. What it has to do with the name of the dish i still don't exactly know. The Criollo part means that it's of Creole origin.
Apparently, the dish was invented a long time ago by an unnamed cook, and nobody knows for sure who it was or exctly when , but the thing took off as it popularity grew and grew over the 19th and 20th centuries when it became the National dish of the country.
Some people say that it represents the different race varieties of Venezuela's people: the very white of the rice for the white people, the very black of the black beans for the people with african ancestry and the very brown of the shredded meat for the mestizos or creole people, along with the true local people, the amerindians. I don't really like the way some people talk about this, but here in Venezuela the race issue is not so intense as a topic as in some other parts of the globe, for example, here when someone says "mi negrita" (my little black one -female-) as a literal translation it doesn't sound too well, but eher it means that the person who says it loves the other one and loves the fact that she's black, and the phrase itself is a token of close connection between the two of them. In the US, if you say that and you're white you are a big bigot. As simple as that.
For the venezuelans, the white must be of an immaculate white, even its preparation involves other ingredients that may tint it like red bellpeppers but the result must be a clean white, and the grains must be shiny and separated, not like a lump of rice. The meat must be soft and very fragant and the black beans must be very soft but still firm, a little sugary but not so much.
Some people here like to eat it with "baranda" which is the name they use to call the fried ripe plantains that go around the plate sometimes.
Of course, there are local variations depending on the state or region you're in. In the andean region for example, where i used to live for a long time, they like to use "tostones" instead of the ripe yellow plantains. Tostones are re-fried green plantains.
Some other people like to use fish instead of the  cow meat,  or some other  meat like a capibara meat.  A capibara is  a HUGE rodent  that tastes like salty  pork. 
Some people like to use sunny side up fried eggs or some slices of avocado, and some white cheese, like the one i ate.
Here are some pictures: This first one is the putside of the restaurant "El Budare de la Castellana"

This second one is a close up of the Pabellón Criollo as it was served to me:
So what do you think? It was very tasty to me.