An Argentinian Restaurant on Valencia for Empanadas: Venga

For a quick, cheap answer to argentinian restaurant near me in the Mission, walk to Venga Empanadas at 443 Valencia Street, between 15th and 16th Streets. It is a small café rather than a steakhouse, and that is the appeal: hand-made empanadas, baked rather than fried, in more than a dozen fillings, with chimichurri on the side and alfajores by the register. Mission Local covered its opening on July 1, 2011, when the brand was already selling its empanadas in supermarkets around the city.

The founder, Pablo Romano, is an Argentine native who grew up between the sophisticated food of Buenos Aires and the gaucho-style cattle-country cooking of the coast. After graduating from the University of Buenos Aires, he moved to Mar Chiquita, the Atlantic resort town of his childhood, and ran a restaurant called La Ines for more than a decade, specialising in asado of wood-grilled lamb, pork and beef. Alongside the restaurant, he ran a fishing-boat rental and campground on the nearby lagoon, which opens to the ocean and is known for its fishing.

The currency collapse and default at the turn of the century hit tourism hard, so Romano sold the business and moved to San Francisco. Here he studied computer graphics and animation at the Academy of Art University and spent five years building photo-shoot sets for the Williams-Sonoma and Pottery Barn catalogues before returning to food. That designer's eye shows in the neat crimps on every empanada.

The bestseller is the Argentine Beef, filled with natural ground beef, onion, red bell pepper and hard-boiled egg, the classic combination you would find in any Buenos Aires bakery. The Salteña Beef is the one to try if you know Argentine regional food: knife-cut skirt steak with green onion, kalamata olives, pepper and egg, in the style of Salta in the north, where beef is chopped by hand rather than ground.

For heat, the Spicy Beef uses slow-cooked ribs in a hot chipotle sauce with baked potato, and the Ají Gallina seasons chicken with saffron, cumin, chile flakes and cayenne. The Gaucho Chicken is milder, with onion, red pepper and tomato. There is also an Argentine Chorizo empanada with peppers and tomato, and a Ham and Cheese made with honey-baked ham, mozzarella, ricotta and béchamel.

More than half the list is vegetarian, which is unusual for an Argentine kitchen. The Five Pepper Manchego mixes poblano, bell peppers and jalapeño with Spanish Manchego and mozzarella. The Three Cheese and Walnuts combines mozzarella, blue cheese and Monterey Jack with onions and caramelised walnuts, and the Fennel Fan is filled with garlic, heirloom tomato, eggplant, fennel and tarragon.

Other vegetarian options include a mushroom mélange with zucchini and herbs, fresh spinach with ricotta and roasted pine nuts, sweet corn with red pepper, and a Mediterranean filling of zucchini, artichoke and mushroom in béchamel. All of the empanadas can be made with a gluten-free crust. Each comes with a choice of three dipping sauces: classic chimichurri, tangy chipotle or spicy tomatillo.

The café also does a small menu of soups and salads, which makes it a full lunch rather than a snack. Soups include a vegan white bean, a lentil soup with Spanish chorizo, an Andean quinoa soup with purple potatoes and fava beans, and gazpacho served cold. There is beer, wine and sangria for an early evening stop.

The sweets are all made in-house every morning. Look for alfajores, the cornflour-and-coconut cookies sandwiched with dulce de leche, plus medialunas, the small sweet croissants Argentines eat with coffee, and dessert empanadas of banana with caramel or apple. Venga also does a breakfast empanada with scrambled eggs and bacon, ham or chorizo, a good reason to come before work.

You order at the counter and eat at one of the small tables or take a bag to go. Venga is open daily, from 8:30 am to 8 pm Sunday through Thursday and until 10 pm on Friday and Saturday, so it works for breakfast, lunch or a late snack before a film on 16th Street.

The company's about page describes the goal as bringing a twist on the traditional bakery and empanada café from back home to the city by the bay, mixing Spanish and Argentine habits with a California menu. In practice that means you can order a classic beef empanada and a kale one side by side, and nobody behind the counter will think it strange.

Online ordering for pickup is available through the website, and delivery runs through Uber Eats and DoorDash. For parties, Venga caters dinners, business lunches and children's birthdays, and there is a second counter at the Salesforce Transit Center in SoMa with shorter weekend hours.

Venga sits on one of the Mission's best walking streets. Valencia between 15th and 20th is lined with independent bookshops, cafés and design stores. Two blocks west on 16th Street, Mission Dolores has the oldest intact building in San Francisco, an adobe chapel completed in 1791, with a small cemetery garden beside it.

On the way, the Roxie Theater on 16th Street has been showing films since 1909 and is one of the oldest cinemas in the country still operating. Continue up Dolores Street to the park for a view back over the Mission rooftops toward downtown.

Venga Empanadas, 443 Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA 94103, between 15th and 16th Streets in the Mission District. Email: vengasf@gmail.com. Opened: July 2011 on Valencia Street. Founder: Pablo Romano. Daily hours: 8:30 am to 8 pm Sunday through Thursday, 8:30 am to 10 pm Friday and Saturday. Getting there: 16th Street Mission BART is about two blocks east, and Muni line 22 runs along 16th Street. Must-try: Salteña Beef, Spicy Beef, Five Pepper Manchego and an alfajor. Options: every empanada can be made gluten-free; vegetarian fillings outnumber meat ones.