Why has New York gone crazy for savoury pastries, from empanadas to char siu baos?

The hottest accessory in New York is not a pair of rose-coloured sunglasses or a pistachio green Rolex. It is something more affordable, more versatile and messier: a patty. Purveyors of interesting patties – handheld pastries filled with things like meat or vegetables – are popping up everywhere in the Big Apple. Think Caribbean patties. Think Latin empanadas. Think burekas, samsas, char siu bao, polsehorn and pasties. They are the perfect snack and, often, the perfect meal. New Yorkers cannot get enough of them right now. “In our culture, this is our slice,” says Ben Siman-Tov, co-owner of Buba Bureka, which specialises in Israeli-style burekas. He describes them as “if a spanakopita and a croissant had a baby”. Buba’s flaky burekas are offered with four fillings: feta cheese, black-pepper-flecked mashed potatoes, spinach and artichoke, and corn and cotija cheese. All are priced at US$18. The shop, which opened in April, drew crowds from the jump, fuelled in part by social media. “No matter how much I make, it’s selling out,” Siman-Tov says. Krishnendu Ray, a professor of food studies at New York University, has a theory about what might be driving demand for patties. “We have been in disarray, culturally and socially, through the pandemic, and that continues,” he says. “Even people safely higher up in the social architecture are quite anxious. Food we touch with our hands and our fingers always brings us down to Earth.” Burekas and their brethren are an easy sell in a melting-pot city like New York, where people have an innate familiarity with the format, says Von Diaz, author of Islas: A Celebration of Tropical Cooking. “Everyone recognises that they, in their own culture, have some delicious protein [or vegetable] thing, encased in some kind of bread or dough.” Or as Jesus Villalobos, co-founder of Titi’s Empanadas, puts it: “[In New York], no one asks what an empanada is – they just ask what’s in it.” He adds: “Anything will fit in an empanada. We see it as a canvas. There’s no pineapple-on-pizza debate in the empanada world.” And before you ask, yes, Titi’s offers a pizza empanada, ironically sans pineapple. Producing food that has egalitarianism in its DNA means that value is always top of mind for Villalobos. But that does not mean making the cheapest product possible. More customers are looking for “a culinary experience on a budget”. Villalobos put as much effort into grinding the corn for the hominy shells wrapping the US$3.50 potato-and-cheese-filled empanadas as he does in producing the puff pastry for Titi’s US$7.50 braised oxtail empanadas. “I don’t want to give people the ability to say, ‘Hey, you’re gentrifying empanadas.’” But the question of what an empanada or a patty or a burek should cost is a fraught one. “Why is a US$8 latte justifiable, but a US$8 patty is outrageous?” asks Daniel Eddy, who founded Pop’s Patties with fellow chef Shirwin Burrowes in 2023. Pop’s specialises in upgraded versions of the Caribbean patties that have become a familiar feature of New York’s culinary landscape. Burrowes, who was born in Barbados and worked at New York restaurant Chef’s Table at Brooklyn Fare, cranks out from 1,800 to 2,000 patties per week. The beef patty has depth in part because of the grass-fed, New York-raised beef that Burrowes sources. The same goes for the jerk chicken patty, made with organic, pastured poultry. Occasionally, Burrowes gets a whole goat and uses it to make curry patties. Those disappear quickly, as do the ones filled with a stewed oxtail “like my mom would make”, he says. Go to Lincoln Centre and you will find Kwame Onwuachi’s US$18 patties at Chef Kwame’s Patty Palace. The patties – flavours include curry chicken and jerk mushroom – are served on coco bread and topped with ginger cabbage slaw, green aioli and jerk barbecue sauce. They are big, messy sandwiches, but the bread helps contain the inevitable patty crumbs. It is not just patties that Onwuachi is selling, says Diaz. “Food is an experience, and people do travel through what they eat. Chef Kwame is taking grab-and-go street food and turning it into something exciting, elegant and creative, and then marketing it to a very different culture as an exciting experience. “People will pay US$18 for a patty because they’re, like, ‘Where can I travel to when I eat this patty? What are the layers of history and flavour that I can experience just by enjoying this?’” While these prices are new territory for a historically humble food, they are not excessively high by New York standards. A sturgeon sandwich at Barney Greengrass will set you back US$25. The chicken avocado ranch bowl at Sweetgreen, just a few blocks up Broadway, will cost you US$18, maybe more. To Eddy, it is a long-overdue update. “Look at Bar Kabawa. It’s good to go in there and see that you can get a patty for US$12 because it’s valuing the culture and the product and the labour in an appropriate fashion.” None of the city’s patties has generated more excitement or acclaim than those at chef Paul Carmichael’s Bar Kabawa, next to his pan-Caribbean restaurant Kabawa. Bar Kabawa’s cocktail-friendly small bites include a Noah’s Ark offering of eight patties: two each with meat, poultry, seafood and vegetables. Prices range from US$10 for a fried oat and kale patty to US$18 for the baked savoury-sweet one filled with crab and squash. On offer is an inevitable US$15 beef patty. “You can’t open a patty shop without a beef patty. That’s the grandad,” says Carmichael. He wants diners to think at first bite, “Oh, this isn’t a bodega patty. This is worth the price of admission.” View this post on Instagram A post shared by Sakari Smithwick (@sakarismithwick) At Bar Kabawa, that means using short rib, with bone marrow and conch for extra richness and texture. Stylistically, the patties draw as much from Haiti – butter-rich, impossibly flaky crusts – as they do from Jamaica, generously filled and verging on juicy. “When I moved here [from Barbados] at 20 years old, I lived next to Champion bakery in the Bronx,” Carmichael says. “When I was doing my externship, I was getting paid like US$225 per week. I lived on patties. Patties kept me upright.” For now, the patties exist within the Caribbean vernacular, but that could change. Carmichael has been musing over fillings for years. Chinese char siu? Maybe. Over a recent meal at Salty Lunch Lady’s Little Luncheonette, he got to thinking that a tuna melt patty could be worth pursuing. “If there is love and demand, who knows?” he says. As with burekas and empanadas, patties at Bar Kabawa are hand food. “No people eating it with a knife and fork,” Carmichael says. “It’s fun. Crumbs all over you. You’re supposed to be a mess, because they are a mess.”

Why has New York gone crazy for savoury pastries, from empanadas to char siu baos?

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}New York’s latest food craze is handheld patties – think empanadas and burekas – which offer flavour and comfort in a grab-and-go format

New York’s latest food craze is handheld patties – think empanadas and burekas – which offer flavour and comfort in a grab-and-go format