Dorello Pizzas & Empanadas Restaurant Review

Dorello Pizzas - Empanadas Restaurant Review
The best empanadas in town are from Dorello Pizzas & Empanadas located at Cabello 3431 in Palermo.

Dorello is a small delivery/carry out pizzeria that has the best empanadas in Buenos Aires. My boyfriend and I stumbled across this tiny restaurant at about 11 p.m. on a Sunday night. We didn’t want a formal sit-down restaurant, we were just looking to grab something quick to take home and this place was perfect. It is next door to a Chinese Restaurant on Cabello about two blocks northwest of Las Heras Park. I am not sure of their hours (not posted) but being that there wasn’t much else open on that Sunday night I assume they are open seven days a week until at least midnight.

The small restaurant has a single table where you can enjoy a beer while you wait for your pizza or empanadas. The decorations are very simple, a bunch of collectable Coca-Cola bottles sitting on the built in shelves, but there is still plenty to keep you entertained. If you look in the back you can see the cook preparing your empanadas and cooking them in an old brick oven. – No wonder they are the best empanadas I’ve tasted since I came to Buenos Aires over a month ago.

Empanadas from Dorello Pizzas in Buenos Aires, Argentina

Dorello Pizzas Empanadas

I wasn’t expecting much from this small delivery place, but they certainly surprised me. We ordered a dozen empanadas, four different flavors, and loved every one of them! We tried the chicken (pollo), ground beef (carne), cut beef (carne cuchillo), and the spicy cheese (mexicana). The pollo was very juicy and there were big chunks of onions mixed in with the meat. The bread was so light, crispy and flavorful. Typically I don’t like to take the first bite of empanadas because the bread isn’t very good, but I could have eaten rolls of this empanada dough. It was much thinner than the crust used at Solo Empanadas.

I really enjoyed the mexicana empanada; it was stuffed with mozzarella cheese and spicy red peppers. I haven’t found many spicy dishes in Argentina so it was a nice surprise. My boyfriend used the meat from the carne empanada to turn the mexicana empanada into a kind of taco; it completely satisfied my Mexican food craving!

Another great thing about this empanada place is that the empanadas are rolled differently so you can distinguish what type of filling is inside without taking a bit. The back of the menu shows a picture of 22 different empanadas, each with a unique look. Take a menu home with you so you can pick out your favorite flavors without tasting each one first. They have some interesting flavors to choose from too, like oriental, Mediterranean, Greek and Caribbean.

Dorello also has a wide selection of pizzas. I haven’t tried them, but I am sure they are just as delicious as the empanadas. They must cook them over the fire of the brick oven, just like the crispy empanadas. This form of cooking is called ‘pizza a la piedra’, which translates into pizza on the stone.