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| - I'm not gonna lie, before I hit up JE in Kensington Market last night I had already completed a fair amount of research on the joint. A minute into my online recon, it became quite apparent that I was not going to find a negative review on JE, only individuals boasting about the solid nada.
The owner, Irene Morales, moved to Toronto from Chile way back in the day and used to bake empanadas for the Chilean community as a part-time gig. They became in such high demand that she subsequently purchased a hot dog cart and began to sell them out of the cart on Augusta St. now full-time. With the continued success of her pockets of love demand rose and she was able to purchase the venue she currently operates out of.
When I had first arrived I sat out on the patio which could seat up to 20 people. To order you run up the stairs to the actual storefront where you fill find a couple tables look over the patio and another couple inside. Over all the venue is very small but clearly a high turnover demon. In fact as we were ordering and eating there were constantly people coming in and out getting empanadas to go.
You may be asking yourself, what the hell is an empanada? What is so good about one? Well, Irene's delicious empanadas are a perfect pocket pastry stuffed with meat and a medley of olives, raisins, onions and I even found a hard boiled egg in mine! I tried both the chicken, beef, and cheese empanadas. Although the chicken was moist and seasoned well the beef definitely took the cake, it was spiced to perfection and I could have eaten 3 and subsequently taken a nap. The cheese empanadas are minis and I highly recommend getting at least one to accompany your sizeable empanada. They are pre-made and take approximately 3-4 minutes to bake.
With each empanada comes this holy homemade salsa screaming citrus and spice. It's the type of salsa that makes you want to learn how to make salsa.. properly. It's served in a small clay dish and by the end of the meal I was licking every last drop that I could from the little bowl, it was that good. In fact right now I'm hard fiending an empanada, it will definitely be on my to do list for this weekend. If you find yourself in Kensington or not, do it.
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