5 Seattle-area pastry pop-ups featuring Latin American favorites

Recently, however, a surge of entrepreneurs from across Latin America seems to have finally found an audience for their empanadas, conchas, and quesadillas, which showcase the region’s various common styles and country-specific sweets.

While Seatango found a permanent home for its Argentine baked goods and the Colombian Delights Bakery resided in Olympic Sculpture Park for the summer, many of the most exciting alfajores and creative cookies roam the city or offer pre-orders for pick-up, so we’ve figured out where and how they can be found.

This shop originally stems from the owner and chef’s previous shop, Selva Central Glass. Inspired by appearances on Netflix’s “Sugar Rush” and Food Networks “Big Time Bake,” a graduate of the culinary school and former head baker at Wallingford’s Cubes Baking Co., Mayra Sibrian switched from focusing on glassware to presenting her Salvadoran and Mexican cultures through food .

Their typical Salvadoran quesadillas – a pound cake with cheese, not to be confused with the Mexican version – share the table at events with baked goods such as plantain muffins filled with chocolate ganache and sweet semitas filled with guava and hibiscus chia jam. Keep an eye on Selva’s Instagram for the constant farmers market and pop-up locations, and pre-order on the website to make sure you get what you want before it sells out.

When Sebastian Quintana introduced his wife to his family in Chile, where he grew up, he also introduced her to the cookie that would change her life. He met Aislinn McManigal when they both worked for Tom Douglas’s Lola, and while he had migrated from the kitchen to the tech industry, he returned to eating last year when the two started this company to sell alfajores, the caramel Sandwich biscuits found all over South America in Cono Sur countries.

The standard shape includes two shortbread biscuits combined with a dash of dulce de leche, but Oso Negro takes their alfajores a step further by coating them in chocolate, rolling them in nuts, and creating pistachio, peanut butter, and espresso versions. Pre-order on their website to pick them up in their regular markets – Fremont, SLU, and Burien – and check out pop-ups on their Instagram.

After Karen Sandoval quit her job as a pastry chef at FlintCreek Cattle Co. in 2019, she started selling baked goods on Instagram, starting with Christmas cakes. But she found her groove in the pandemic – and an audience for her meticulous and tasteful recreations of the baked goods of her Mexican heritage. A year later, her vacation offerings included chocolate-peppermint and rompope-flavored conchas, and now she has the sweet buns for sale semi-regularly on Instagram – as well as other seasonal specials – like pan de muerto in the fall.

As the design business slowed in the pandemic, Runa Nakayama opened this all-online delivery business with the kind of empanadas she knew from her home country, Chile. The minced-beef-filled, shell-shaped baked empanadas de pino are the most typical version, but they offer a wide variety of choices including mini pinos, vegetarian and vegan versions, puff pastry empanadas, and the beef hot dog-filled chaparrita.

They also make pastel de choclo, a casserole made from ground beef and corn pudding that is rarely seen in these areas. Order for delivery if you are entitled or for collection in Bellevue if you cannot do so through the website.

This magical combination of frozen, wet drinks and deep-fried filled cakes comes from Kent, imagined by three Peruvian sisters from New York to transport customers on the streets of the city on hot summer days. The frozen empanadas, which fry to a bubbly, crispy crust, come in Peruvian-inspired flavors like lomo saltado (fried beef) and American ones like pepperoni pizza, while the colorful sauce options include aji verde, Peruvian onion, flavor and mayo ketchu. Wash it down with Henny Colada, Tropi Frosé or Jungle Juice. Their menu is available on Instagram and you can order by DM or by email to the address given there, with delivery being offered to some areas.