From the filling to the crust, these are the best empanadas in Costa Rica.

My husband and I have discovered the best empanadas north of Argentina, which are conveniently located here in Costa Rica. Donde El Ché on the east side of San Jose in San Pedro, comes highly recommended.

The difference between Tico empanadas and Argentinian empanadas are the crusts. Ticos love their corn-based dough and Donde El Ché’s are made of flour. I definitely prefer the flour and baking them as opposed to frying them into balls of grease.

The fillings offered at Donde El Che were amazing. We tried the chicken, spinach and the tomato-garlic flavors. Surprisingly, the tomato garlic empanada had the most unique, intense and delicious flavor of all three. I of course ordered that one and didn’t want to share, but how do you brag about what you’ve got without letting others try it out?

For the next course, my husband and I split the Vacío de Horno (or something like that), which means ‘Empty Oven’. This was by far the best cut of meat I’ve tried in San Jose. It was cured first giving it a taste similar to corned beef and then baked to perfect tenderness in a delicious savory sauce and accompanied by a baked potato and salad.

Our friend ordered the Churripan, which was a slice of marinated pork on homemade bread with a chimichurri sauce to DIE for. My flavor detectors suggested that the chimichurri was made with olive oil, pimentos, whole black peppercorns, garlic, herbs and some sort of secret magnificence that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

“A fiesta in his mouth”, is how my husband described his Argentinian food experience at Donde El Ché and vowed that if we ever opened a restaurant he would never be satisfied unless we could evoke the exact same urge to return as that restaurant did. We will be back, you can count on that. We were so inspired after the trip that we tried to make our own empanadas. They were not worthy.

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