My introduction to empanadas, the Spanish and Latin American worlds’ hand pie, came over 20 years ago while living in Buenos Aires. I vividly recall those first bites — a piquant beef and olive filling wrapped in a soft, warm, lightly flaky and chewy crust. At that point, “baked meat pie” was my understanding of an empanada because that was the first I had tried (I lived a sheltered gastronomical life growing up in suburban Detroit), so it came as a bit of a surprise when every empanada ordered in the years after returning from Buenos Aires was fried.
There are pluses and minuses to both approaches, but perhaps because the baked variety proved elusive, finding it around Detroit became a minor obsession. After 20 years of looking, Empacho, the Near East Side Argentinian empanada shop, finally has ‘em.
In the meat pie family, the empanada is a pretty broad category. It’s not unlike the British pasty, Jamaican patty, Aussie meat pie, Indian samosa, Greek spanakopita, Chinese wonton, etc.
The Argentinean baked take likely owes to the nation’s huge Spanish and Italian immigrant populations, and Empacho owner Gonzalo Collazo describes it as a bit of a marriage between a Spanish tapa and Italian pizza. There are variations within the country – some small villages in the north fry their empanadas, Collazo notes – but they primarily have to do with the types of food and crops produced in each region.
Perhaps the best was the beef Mendoza empanada. Argentina’s beef is regarded as the world’s best, in part because they largely let their cattle graze on open land instead of stuffing them in a tight pen. The Mendoza region sits in the Andes foothills on the country’s west side, and it is a big grape-, wine-, and olive-producing region. The ground beef is packed in the shell with olives, onions, raisins, garlic, bell peppers, and eggs.
It’s similar to the beef Salta empanada, a style from a region just north of Mendoza, which comes packed with onion, bell pepper, potato, garlic, olives, and egg. Also excellent is the chorizo, made with onion, paprika, garlic, and oregano. Note that Spanish and Argentinian chorizo is not like the Mexican variety; it’s less spicy, but pops with flavor from the paprika, cumin, and garlic.
Empacho offers a range of sauces, though the best is the chimichurri, an Argentinian steak sauce often made with herbs like cilantro and parsley, olive oil, red wine vinegar, garlic, salt and oregano, and it’s perhaps the planet’s best condiment. Apply liberally, especially with the beef dishes. Ditto for the criolla sauce, made with olive oil, bell peppers, green onions, red onion, and vinegar.
Less adventurous types often go for the chicken empanada, Collazo says. The bird is cooked in sherry wine, with onion, bell pepper, and garlic. I’m a huge fan of sherry but this one didn’t stand out to me. Though the filling’s flavor was excellent on its own, the dough simply overshadowed it, and it’s hard to say if that owes to too little filling or what the issue may be.
The ham and cheese empanada is made with a mozzarella enhanced with a bechamel sauce, while the spinach and mozzarella sings because the package is made acidic and slightly sweet from the onions and vinegar in which the filling is sautéed. The napolitana is a pizza version and it’s hard for my upper Midwest palate not to detect it as a fancy pizza roll. More veg options are in the pipeline, Collazo says.
We tried two dessert empanadas — a dulce de leche and sweet cream cheese. Both were awesome and served with a sweet sauce consisting of dulce de leche thinned with sour cream, which also serves to dial down the sweetness. Collazo says Americans say the dulce de leche is too sweet (huh?!) without the cream. There’s plenty more sweet stuff to explore on the menu, like gelato and candy.
The small shop is mostly carryout, though there’s some outdoor seating in the warmer months. Collazo, who also runs a small frozen meal business in Argentina with his mom and a “team of grandmas” who each specialize in a dish, says Empacho is ready to expand, and he’s eyeing a new location in Ann Arbor.
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