FOOD & DRINK · EMPANADAS · 2026
The empanada is not one thing. It is twenty-three things, one per province, and Buenos Aires quietly serves most of them.
July 2026 · 6 addresses · Buenos Aires
Ask an Argentine where to eat the best empanadas and watch what happens. The answer will not be a restaurant. It will be a province, usually the one their grandmother came from, and the conversation will move quickly to whether the dough should be baked or fried, whether the beef should be cut with a knife or ground, and whether putting a boiled egg inside is tradition or vandalism.
This is the useful thing to understand before you order. Buenos Aires does not have one empanada. It has a map of them, brought south by people who moved to the capital and opened a place that cooked the way home cooked. Tucumán argues with Salta. Catamarca sweetens the dough. La Rioja fries. Bolivia, just over the northern border, brings a heat that most porteños find alarming.
Six addresses follow, each one a different province on the same city grid. All six were checked against the establishment's own listing in July 2026.
01 · LA COCINA
RECOLETA · CATAMARCA · SINCE 1987
The slightly sweet dough that converts people
La Cocina has been on Avenida Pueyrredón since 1987, a narrow room with a handful of tables and a queue of people who came specifically for the catamarqueña: a dough with a faint sweetness that plays against the spice in the filling. Order the classic beef, then order a humita to see what corn can do in a pastry, and if it is on, the blue cheese.
There is a second, smaller branch in the Microcentro, inside Galería Boston on Florida.
→ AV. PUEYRREDÓN 1508, RECOLETA (ALSO FLORIDA 142, GALERÍA BOSTON)
02 · EL SANJUANINO
RECOLETA · NORTHERN · SINCE 1960
The bodegón that outlived the neighbourhood around it
Enrique Baudonnet came from San Juan in 1960 with the idea of feeding the capital the flavours of the north, and El Sanjuanino has been doing it from the same brick-lined basement ever since, on a street where the surrounding restaurants now charge four times as much. Baked or fried, beef or ham and cheese, plus locro when the weather turns.
It is two blocks from the Recoleta cemetery, which makes it the most sensible lunch in the area by a wide margin.
→ POSADAS 1515, RECOLETA
03 · FORTÍN SALTEÑO
NÚÑEZ · SALTA
Knife-cut beef, baked, no shortcuts
The salteña is the empanada most travellers picture: small, baked, juicy, with the beef cut by hand rather than minced so the texture stays. Fortín Salteño makes them the way Salta insists on, up in Núñez, far enough north of the tourist grid that you will be eating with locals.
→ AV. CABILDO 4702, NÚÑEZ
04 · LA PACEÑA
BELGRANO · BOLIVIA
The one that will actually make you sweat
La Paceña serves the Bolivian salteña, which shares a name with the Salta version and very little else. The filling is soupier, the spice is real, and the puka kapa, cheese and onion with chilli, runs hotter than almost anything else sold in this city. Argentines are famously cautious with heat. This is where that stops.
→ ECHEVERRÍA 2570, BELGRANO
Eating across four barrios in one day? Núñez to San Telmo is an hour of city traffic. Our drivers do the route while you digest.
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BOOK A PRIVATE FOOD TOUR →
05 · EL GAUCHITO
SAN TELMO · LA RIOJA · FRIED
Fried, juicy, open every day
The riojana is fried, and once you have had a good one you understand why half the country refuses to bake. El Gauchito has been doing them on Avenida Independencia, at the edge of San Telmo, with a filling seasoned close to locro and enough juice to require a forward lean. It opens every day, lunch and dinner, which is not a given in this city.
→ AV. INDEPENDENCIA 414, SAN TELMO
06 · LA MEZZETTA
VILLA ORTÚZAR · THE PIZZERÍA EXCEPTION · SINCE 1939
Where the empanada is the sidekick, and still worth it
Honesty first: nobody goes to La Mezzetta for the empanadas. They go for the fugazzeta rellena, a pizza carrying something close to a kilo and a half of mozzarella between two layers of dough under a lid of onion, and it has been that way since 1939. But the counter also turns out meat and ham and cheese empanadas, and eating one standing at the bar of a pizzería that has never installed a single chair is a specific porteño experience worth having.
There are no tables. There is no second branch, whatever the internet tells you. It closes on Sundays.
→ AV. ÁLVAREZ THOMAS 1321, VILLA ORTÚZAR
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between a salteña and a tucumana?
Both come from the northwest and both are usually baked, but the salteña is smaller and juicier, with potato in the filling and beef cut by hand. The tucumana is larger, often fried, and traditionally sealed with a repulgue of thirteen folds. Ask for either by name and you will be understood immediately.
Are empanadas a meal or a starter?
Both, depending on how many. Three is a light lunch, six is dinner, and any Argentine ordering fewer than two per person is either unwell or being polite. They are also the standard thing to eat standing up between other plans.
How do I know which filling I am about to eat?
By the repulgue, the braided seal along the edge. Every kitchen uses a different shape or fold to mark carne, pollo, humita and jamón y queso, and the code changes from place to place. When in doubt, ask: the person behind the counter has explained it several thousand times.
Follow the Dough North
The empanada is the cheapest way to travel across Argentina without leaving the city. Six places, six provinces, one afternoon if you are ambitious and have someone else driving.
When you are ready to see where the recipes actually came from, our private day trips go further than the city limits.
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