If you think about it, Veronica Agama didn’t exactly bring her Latin kitchen to the 518. Her Latin kitchen brought her here.
Veronica was living in Queens with her two boys—one of whom is gluten-free and one of whom is vegetarian—when the pandemic hit in 2020. The restaurant she had been working at closed, but she started experimenting in her home kitchen.
“I know from my home country of Ecuador that we can use plantain for crusts for empanadas, and also yuca, which is also called cassava,” she says of gluten-free alternatives to traditional empanada dough. “I started making empanadas and I started posting pictures of how the kids were eating them. Friends and family started asking me if they could have some. After a few weeks, they would continue asking for more, so I said, you know what? I’m a single mom, and I’m making all this extra food. I should start selling it.”
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