An Argentine Bakery Binge

Along with dulce de leche, choripan has to be considered one of Argentina’s great contributions to world cuisine: grilled chorizo on a grilled baguette. It just doesn’t get any more elemental than that. Unfortunately, our trip to El Patio, an Argentine bakery and cafe, came at the very end of our whirlwind tour of Rockville’s culinary delights. Since El Patio was our fifth destination that day, we opted to get a number of baked goods that we could take home to enjoy later, instead of made-to-order items like choripan.

El Patio offers a tempting array of empanadas, tartas (Argentina’s take on quiche), and tortillas (Spanish style omelettes usually eaten at room temperature).

In contrast to the meal-sized empanadas served at Julia’s Empanadas, El Patio’s empanadas are more akin to cocktail hour treats.

The carne empanada was pleasing enough, it’s flaky pasty concealing ground beef mixed with bits of hard-boiled egg, onions, and red peppers. Sadly, no olive seemed to be hidden amongst its contents.

We also tried the choclo empanada which was braided pastry purse stuffed with corn and onions in a light, barely discernable sauce. The menu promised bechamel sauce, so while I was disappointed at the choclo empanada’s relatively dry interior, El Patio deserves credit for offering an empanada variation that I’ve not seen anywhere else.

Among the savories, the espinaca tortillla was the clear stand-out. Each hefty slab is densely packed with spinach with only the barest amount of egg to hold everything together. We were actually grateful for the veggie interlude which included not just spinach, but also bits of tomato, green pepper, and onion. In addition to a few whole cloves of garlic, the tortilla had a strong spice presence that may have been cumin.

The pastries are understandably dulce de leche centric. Though the puff pastry looked a bit tired and dilapidated, we figured that a combination of dulce de leche and buttery pastry could overcome any physical shortcomings. But this pastry was every bit as unremarkable as it appears.

I was more excited about the shell-shaped meringues appealingly glued together with dulce de leche and topped off with a cherry. But it’s exceedingly difficult to handle this meringue sandwich without getting it all over the place. In fact, I assumed my hunched piglet stance over our kitchen sink, the better to catch the errant bits of meringue shrapnel flying off from my dessert induced frenzy. It seems that I do some of my best eating over our kitchen sink. Although I wanted it to work, the meringue was a bit bland, and its porous texture seemed to have absorbed the faintest essence of other items in the refrigerated case.

Despite the fact that most of our selections were underwhelming, we still only tried a small sampling of El Patio’s bounty. In addition to their rendition of choripan, I remain curious about their sandwiches de miga, described as “tea sandwiches made with Argentine specialty crumb bread.”

—AC