Empanada Shop Near Me in Battersea: Santa Maria del Sur's Boxes

Santa Maria del Sur has been a neighbourhood Argentine restaurant at 129 Queenstown Road in Battersea since 2006, and most people know it for steak. The quieter reason to walk in is the empanada list: six baked fillings at £3.90 each on the current dinner menu, with any three for £11 and any twelve for £43. If you typed empanada shop near me somewhere between Clapham and Chelsea Bridge, this brick-walled room is the closest thing south of the river to a Buenos Aires corner bakery that also happens to run a charcoal grill.

The restaurant says it was founded in 2006, and its team page credits Alberto Abbate with setting it up alongside other restaurants and shops he has run in London. When it turned ten, the restaurant marked the date with an anniversary party on 7 November 2016 and a press release that still sits on its website. In that release Abbate described the cooking as the kind of meal you would get at a Sunday barbecue back home, meat on a charcoal and wood grill, with beef brought in from a butcher in Argentina.

The same release recalls the moment that put the room on the map beyond SW8: a few years before the anniversary, Santa Maria del Sur appeared on Gordon Ramsay's The F Word and was named the third best local restaurant in the UK. Today the menu page names Nelson Lopes as the chef leading the kitchen, and the team page introduces Tomás Matos, the Portuguese-born manager who moved to London in 2006 and runs the cocktails, and Yolanda Rodrigues, who trained at the Mariano Moreno cookery school in Venezuela and is credited with a soft spot for Argentine desserts.

Every empanada on the dinner menu is £3.90, which makes ordering pleasantly simple. Beef and chicken are the classics, ham and cheese is the one Argentine children grow up on, and spinach with mozzarella is the standard vegetarian choice. Two fillings are more particular to this kitchen: a caprese version with provolone, tomato and basil, and blue cheese with walnut, which is richer than it sounds and pairs well with a glass of red.

The bundles are where the maths gets better. Any three empanadas are £11, any six £22, any nine £32 and any twelve £43, so a table of four sharing a dozen pays a little under £3.60 each. Google reviewers single out the empanadas more than you might expect for a steakhouse; the review summary highlights 'mouth watering argentinian empanadas', and the chicken version comes up by name in several reviews.

Lunch runs from 12pm to 3pm every day, and the lunch menu turns the pastries into a light meal. One empanada with salad is £6, two with salad £10 and three with salad £14, each with the same choice of beef, chicken, caprese, blue cheese, ham and cheese, or spinach. If one empanada is not enough and a full steak is too much, the lunch board also lists choripán, the grilled Argentine sausage roll with chimichurri, at £8, and a chicken milanesa with chips or salad at £9.

For a weekday worker on the Battersea side of Chelsea Bridge, two empanadas with salad is a sensible order. It is enough to call lunch and quick to eat, and you are out the door before the 3pm changeover to the dinner kitchen.

Empanadas are the starter here, and the grill is still the main event. Steaks are sold by weight with a 200-gram minimum, priced per 100 grams: rump at £9, sirloin at £12.50, ribeye at £13.50 and fillet at £17.60. The sharing platters are built for two, and the Parrilla San Telmo at £57 brings rump, marinated chicken, chorizo, black pudding, provolone and chimichurri to the table on one board.

Before the meat, order provoleta, grilled provolone with oregano and chilli flakes, at £11, and finish with flan with dulce de leche and almond flakes at £6.90. The wine list leans on Mendoza. The house red, Hormiga Negra Malbec from Maipú, is £30 a bottle, and there is a fortified Torrontés from Mendoza for anyone curious about Argentine dessert wine.

The dining room is small and runs on bookings. The restaurant's website has a reservations page and the Google listing has a reserve-a-table button, and both are worth using for Friday and Saturday nights, when several recent reviewers were there for birthday dinners. Last orders are at 9:30pm, half an hour before the 10pm close, so a late booking leaves little time for a second round of empanadas.

Weekends are easier for a casual visit, because Saturday and Sunday run all day from 12pm to 10pm with no afternoon break. A mid-afternoon table on Sunday is the calmest way to work through several fillings at your own pace. Recent reviews mention efficient service and a warm room, and the owners reply to many of them, including replies posted in the last few months.

Queenstown Road runs north towards Chelsea Bridge, and walking up it after lunch brings you to Battersea Park, with its riverside paths, boating lake and the Peace Pagoda facing the Thames. Turn east along the river instead and you reach Battersea Power Station, now a shopping and dining quarter with its own Northern line station. The nearest rail stop to the restaurant is Queenstown Road (Battersea), a short walk away, with trains into Waterloo.

Santa Maria del Sur is a restaurant first, so the empanadas come with a seat and a menu rather than a grab-and-go counter. For a dedicated empanada shop with a walk-up window, Chango has a branch at Battersea Power Station on Electric Boulevard, a short walk north-east. Ask Karpo in the Karpo APP to compare which of the two is open when you are heading out.

Address: Santa Maria del Sur, 129 Queenstown Road, London SW8 3RH. Phone: 020 7622 2088. Hours from the restaurant's website: Monday to Friday lunch 12pm to 3pm and dinner 6pm to 10pm; Saturday and Sunday 12pm to 10pm; last orders 9:30pm. Empanadas: £3.90 each on the dinner menu, any three £11, any six £22, any nine £32, any twelve £43; lunch plates with salad £6, £10 or £14. Booking: reservations page on santamariadelsur.com or the Google Maps listing.