Don’t cry for me with these pies around
Given a choice between a fried empanada or a baked empanada, I invariably go for the fried — mostly because I love the way frying can bubble up a pastry crust, give it layers and a bit of brittle crunch. However. Recently the baked empanadas at a tiny Southwest Freeway shop, the Argentina Cafe’s Empanada Factory, have won my heart. So delicate and flaky are these little hand pies, so pretty with their crimped edges and shiny glaze, that I’m a convert. I wasn’t a fan when I stopped in to the mothership Argentina Cafe on Sage some years back, but the opening of this efficient little satellite near my office has turned me into a budding regular.
I like the fried pies here just fine, but I like the baked ones even better. They’re all made to order, which gives them far more immediacy and textural nuance than if they were premade and left to sit out. Consider the gentle, utterly lovely choclo empanada, in which pully strings of mozzarella wrap themselves around corn kernels, onion and sweet red pepper. The delicacy of the fine-layered baked crust would make it a fitting addition to Queen Elizabeth’s tea table. (Well, except for the splendidly ungovernable cheese.) At $2.50, it’s an affordable treat.
So’s the equally lovely baked spinach and cheese empanada, in which nutty provolone (an Argentine fave) twines with the mozz for a richer, fuller effect. I particularly loved the fresh, dark-green character of the spinach in this empanada. It’s one of a nice range of choices that make this neat-as-a-pin semi-serve a great option for vegetarians.
There’s plenty for carnivores, too. I was amused to hear a teenage boy who came in with his mom ordering “baked Mediterranean beef, baked beef and fried Salteña,” which is pretty much the beef trifecta here. The fried Salteña empanada was a favorite of mine, too, with its filling of picadillo-like ground beef, potato and green onion. It was so juicy it dripped. As did the Sweet Beef empanada, which gets its name (and its
medieval flavor) from raisins and warm spices in the minced beef mix. It might not be for everyone, but I loved its sweetand-salty punch.
The baked chicken empanada with “onion, egg and spices” might sound a bit dull, but I found it to be a subtle marvel, with clear flavor and the chopped egg adding an almost fluffy texture to the filling.
I was less enamored of a blandish curried chicken version that I was served instead of the curried vegetable pie I ordered on another visit — one of two such mixups on my two visits. (The other was a pineapple and cream cheese empanada that turned out to be a combo of sweetened ricotta and plumped-up golden raisins, perfectly agreeable but not what I was expecting.)
My only other quibble was a crownlike baked onion and provolone cheese pie that was too stingy with the onion. I mean, the whole beauty of the Argentinian fugazetta mania is the extravagance
Empanada Factory
3833 U.S. 59 S. 713-622-9597 theempanadasfactory.com Open 10 a.m.-8 p.m. daily of the sweet onion in conjunction with all that molten cheese. You can get a really good lunch here for under 10 bucks, if you keep your order to two or three pies (four is excessive, I’ve found). You can drink complimentary cold, lemon-scented water from a glass urn, assorted teas (including the famous yerba maté) and quite decent espresso drinks, best of which was a double cortado. For entertainment, there’s a constant parade of international Houstonians, and big screens that, the day I ate in, carried a World Cup game that drew spirited commentary from my fellow patrons. When I left, Croatia was still down by one to England. And President Donald Trump was expected at Windsor Castle for tea.