The hottest accessory in New York isn’t a pair of rose-colored sunglasses or a pistachio green Rolex. It’s something more affordable, more versatile and messier: a handheld patty.
Purveyors of interesting, ambitious savory pastries are popping up everywhere in the Big Apple. Think Caribbean patties. Think Latin empanadas. Think burekas, samsas, char siu bao, pølsehorn and pasties. They’re the perfect snack and, often, the perfect meal. New Yorkers can’t get enough of them right now.
“In our culture, this is our slice,” says Ben Siman-Tov, co-owner of Buba Bureka, which specializes in Israeli style burekas, which he describes to the uninitiated as “if a spanakopita and a croissant had a baby.”
Buba’s flaky, triangular burekas take up about half of the small pizza box they’re served in and are currently offered with four fillings: feta cheese or black-pepper-flecked mashed potatoes, typical of what’s served on Tel Aviv streets; a slightly less typical spinach and artichoke version; and a cross-cultural corn and cotija cheese, inspired by Mexican esquites. All are priced at $18 and cut into four wedges for easier handling. They’re accompanied by a boiled egg, cups of tahini, grated tomato, schug (a not-too-hot chile sauce) and assorted olives and pickles. The corn option gets Mexican crema, pico de gallo and tomatillo salsa.
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The largely takeout shop, which opened in Greenwich Village in April, drew crowds from the jump, fueled in part by social media attention generated by fans like record producer Benny Blanco as well as Siman-Tov’s partnership with Gadi Peleg, founder of the New York-based chainlet Breads Bakery, and Fritz Oleshansky. It’s not uncommon to find the shop shuttered before its 2:30 closing time. “No matter how much I make, it’s selling out,” said Siman-Tov.
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The Pizza Empanada
Krishnendu Ray, a professor of food studies at New York University, has a theory about what-beyond taste or social media hype-might be driving demand for handheld pastries. “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 a relatively 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 recognizes 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.” In the case of Titi’s “NYC inspired empanadas,” that could be traditional Venezuelan fillings such as carne machada (shredded beef) or a bodega classic like chopped cheese or even jerk shrimp. “Anything will fit in an empanada,” says Villalobos. “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. It’s turned into a crucial hook both at the recently opened East Village location and at the original in Williamsburg in Brooklyn, where Titi’s has to compete with slice shops for the attention of late-night revelers.
Producing food that has egalitarianism in its DNA means that value is always top of mind for Villalobos. But that doesn’t mean making the cheapest product possible. More and more customers are looking for “a culinary experience on a budget.” Villalobos takes as much effort into grinding the corn for the hominy shells wrapping the $3.50 potato-and- cheese-filled empanadas as he does in producing the puff pastry for Titi’s $7.50 braised oxtail empanadas. “I don’t want to give people the ability to say, ‘Hey, you’re gentrifying empanadas.’”
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Patty Pricing
But the question of what an empanada or a patty or a burek should cost is still a fraught one. “Why is an $8 latte justifiable, but an $8 patty is outrageous?” asks Daniel Eddy, who founded Pop’s Patties with fellow chef Shirwin Burrowes in 2023. Pop’s specializes in upgraded versions of the turmeric-tinted Caribbean patties that have become a familiar feature of New York’s culinary landscape.
Burrowes, who was born in Barbados and worked on the line at Chef’s Table at Brooklyn Fare, cranks out from 1,800 to 2,000 patties per week. (The cranking is literal: Burrowes uses a hand-turned machine to cut and fill his butter-rich shortcrust shells, which strike the perfect balance between sturdy and flaky.) At Eddy’s cafe, butcher shop and bakery in Park Slope, Brooklyn (all operating under the Winner moniker) they start at $6, while at their stand in the Barclays Center arena, they start at $10.
The beef patty has savory depth in part because of the grass-fed, New York-raised beef that Burrowes sources. Same goes for the jerk chicken patty, made with organic, pastured poultry. Occasionally he 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,” Burrowes says.
Go to Lincoln Center (or to a Mets game at Citi Field), and you’ll find Kwame Onwuachi’s $18 patties at Chef Kwame’s Patty Palace. (They’re easier to score than a reservation at his restaurant Tatiana.) The patties-flavors include curry chicken and jerk mushroom-are served on coco bread from local bakery Royal Caribbean and topped with ginger cabbage slaw, squiggles of herbaceous green aioli and jerk barbecue sauce. It’s a big messy sandwich but the bread helps contain the inevitable patty crumbs. The pepper sauce, an extra $3, is a highlight, with searing, complex Scotch-bonnet-fueled heat, courtesy of a recipe from Onwuachi’s grandfather.
But it’s 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 $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 flavor that I can experience just enjoying this?’”
While these prices are new territory for a historically humble food, they’re not excessively high by New York City standards. A sturgeon sandwich at Barney Greengrass will set you back $25. The chicken avocado ranch bowl at Sweetgreen just a few blocks up Broadway will cost you $18, maybe more. To Eddy, it’s a long overdue update. “Look at Bar Kabawa. It’s good to go in there and see that you can get a patty for $12 because it’s valuing the culture and the product and the labor in an appropriate fashion.”
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The Hottest Patty in Town
Indeed, none of the city’s patties have generated more excitement or acclaim than those at chef Paul Carmichael’s Bar Kabawa, the “rowdy child” daiquiri bar adjacent to his prix fixe pan-Caribbean restaurant Kabawa in the former Momofuku Ko space in the East Village.
Bar Kabawa’s cocktail-friendly small bites includes a Noah’s Ark offering of eight patties-two each with meat, poultry, seafood and vegetables, divided into baked and fried variants. Prices range from $10 for a fried oat and kale patty to $18 for the baked savory-sweet crab-squash-filled one.
On offer is an inevitable-but still surprising-$15 beef patty. ”You can’t open a patty shop without a beef patty. That’s the granddad,” says Carmichael. He wants diners to think at first bite, “Oh, this isn’t a bodega patty. This is worth the price of admission.” 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). A well-stuffed patty is essential if you’re going to have it with coco bread-which you should, since it’s baked here several times a night and served pillowy and warm.
“When I moved here [from Barbados] at 20 years old, I lived next to Champion bakery in the Bronx. When I was doing my externship, I was getting paid like $225 per week. I lived on patties. Patties kept me upright,” Carmichael says.
For now, the patties all 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 an effing knife and fork,” Carmichael says. “It’s fun. Crumbs all over you. You’re supposed to be a mess, because they are a mess.”
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More Quick Bites, From $2.50
Founded just outside of Kingston, Jamaica, in 1980, Juici Patties finally made its New York debut this year, with locations in Brooklyn and the Bronx. Flaky and forcefully spiced, they come in mild and spicy beef, curry chicken and spinach. $4.25
Although Mei Lai Wah has been a Chinatown standby since 1968, it only recently went viral, with phone-wielding fans crowding its tiny Doyers Street location for the superlative pineapple roast pork buns. The restaurant just moved to a larger location on Mott Street to cut down on the wait. From $2.50
Earlier this year, Tashkent Supermarket, an Uzbek grocer known for its extensive prepared-food selection, opened in the West Village. Among its best items are flaky samsas stuffed with fillings like chicken, pumpkin and cumin-spiced lamb. $3.50
At Nordic-inspired cafe Smør, which opened a third New York location in Williamsburg in June, the handheld known as pølsehorn offers a taste of home for wayward Danes. The sausage rolls, wrapped in the same brioche dough used for its doughnuts, come with a side of curry ketchup. $7 Bon Pâtés specializes in Haitian-style patties, which are as much about the flaky puff pastry as they are about the fillings, though they, too, are formidable. Shredded smoked herring is a classic choice, while legumes make the famous vegetable stew portable. From $4.25