Empanada Hut

Restaurant: Empanada Hut
Cuisine: Spanish/South American/Latin

Last visited: November 10, 09

Area: Richmond, BC

5300 No 3 Road (In Lansdowne Mall food court)

Price Range: $10 or less

1: Poor 2: OK 3: Good 4: Very good 5: Excellent 6: Tres Excellent!!

Food: 4

Service: 4

Ambiance: n/a

Overall: 4

Additional comments:

• Family owned and operated
• Authentic
• Specializes in Empanadas
• Homemade pastry/filling
• Very professional
• Baked empanadas
• Limited menu
• Combo Empanda deals
  
• Best eaten hot and upon order
• Could have better ratio of ingredients
• Solid choice for Lansdowne Mall food court

**Recommendation: Chicken Empanda, Beef Empanada (didn't try, but must be comparable to chicken)

Every country has their version of an Empanada or stuffed pastry/bread. There's a Portuguese, Brazilian, Spanish, Mexican, Cuban, and the list goes on, versions of the Empanada. The family that runs Empanada Hut are from South America and their version of the Empanada comes from Chile. They really focus on making the best Empandas because it's basically the only thing they sell. From the pastry to the stuffing everything is homemade and baked daily. Unlike Mexican Empandas, which are perhaps more available in North America, these aren't stuffed with potatoes, peas and carrots etc. It was a nice change and for food court standards it's a great choice.

One of my concerns (this might be a bit picky since it is a food court place) is that the Empanadas do sit under heat lamps throughout the day. Even under heat lamps they still tasted great, and they are definitely best eaten hot. Nothing was burnt, soggy, or dry so in that sense the heat lamp doesn't bother me. I can only imagine how good they are hot and fresh out of the oven.

On the table:

• **Chicken Empanada 4/6
• Baked homemade pastry stuffed with chicken onions, corn and olives.
• I liked this one the best. It was almost like a Latin-style chicken pot pie.
• It was stuffed quite decently and saucy, but not so saucy that it was dripping or making the pastry soggy. The sauce is a house mix of what tastes like taco seasonings. There was tons of sautee onions which they kind of used as a filler and only a few corn kernels.
• There was also one random black olive in each Empanada. I almost thought it was a mistake. I think they should have chopped up the black olives and dispersed it more evenly throughout the filling. You can tell they stuff the Empanada and tuck a single olive in last minute.
• The pastry is really soft, almost like puff pastry, but it's not flaky. It's made with butter, flour and probably shortening. It's the perfect thickness to hold all the filling without breaking. The edges are a little thick, but it's because of the folding which is understandable.

• Seafood Empanada 3.5/6
  
• Baked homemade pastry stuffed with baby clams, baby shrimp, chopped scallop, onions and olives.
  
• Again it was only one olive... that started to get annoying because I liked eating it with the olive. But since there was only one I only got one bite with olive in it with each Empanada.
• This was good, but not as good as the chicken one. I think it could have been much better, but they used a lot of onions as filler to replace the seafood.
  I'm sure when they make it at home it's a 100 times better. All the seafood was kind of minced up to the size of the onions so I lost a lot of the texture.
• Spinach and Feta 2.5/6
• This was definitely the most stuffed Empanada out of the 3.
  
• It was packed with tons and tons of spinach. There was hardly any Feta in it though which was kind of disappointing. I missed that salty creaminess Feta brings to the table. It was actually kind of wet, yet the pastry still wasn't soggy. If they hadn't skimped on the Feta this could have been a 4/6. Even better would be if they mixed in some chopped olives!