Shout-out to Julia’s Empanadas

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Julia’s Empanadas

This is one of my favorite lunchtime spots in the DC area. No joke, I’m there at least one day each week. 1225 Connecticut Ave NW. I take that 30 minute round trip walk from my office regularly. There aren’t too many places in downtown DC where you can eat for under $10 and healthy at that. For about $6.50 you can cop the special of an empanada, a soup and a salad.

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Now, if you’re not sure what an empanada is, dictionary.com defines it as: A Spanish or Latin-American turnover with a flaky crust and a spicy or sweet filling. My typical trip to Julia’s is to get a Jamaican style empanada (ground & chopped beef, onion, potato, curry, spices), a black bean soup and tomato, cucumber & celery salad.

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Lately I’ve been adding another $2 to that special and getting one of the dessert empanadas. They have varieties like strawberry, pineapple coconut and apple. But my off the chains gotta have it knock em out the box favorite dessert empanada is the peach/guava. It is slamm-min!!!!

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I discovered Julia’s Empanadas back in like ’96 when I was working for Everfresh Juice Company as a Account Manager. Every Wednesday I was up in the Adams Morgan area and served accounts on 18th street. 2452 18th street was their address. I know it like the back of my hand. I had never heard of an empanada before those days. I would roll up there, get my order from dude and roll out. That’s pretty much how I treated all my accounts. Some of them would give me food, snacks, drinks, etc but the folks at Julia’s never offered. I sometimes coerced accounts with special juice sales to try and get free food for myself as I was out there walking the streets. This one day was no exception. I hit em with a buy 10 cases, get 2 free deal. Immediately following that announcement I said to dude “Are these things really good?”. He nodded his head and said “Which one do you want?”. I tried the Jamaican style empanada and the rest is history.

From like 2000 to like 2006, I probably had maybe less than 10 empanadas from Julia’s. Not because I didn’t want them, but working out in VA I was far from all of their locations. Now that I’ve been working back in DC, I can get to each one of their 3 locations with little to no effort. Thus, I’m back in effect and saying wassup to my man Raymond each week. So, if you’re in the downtown DC area or around Adams Morgan, check them out. Trust me, the food is like dat!!!! My stomach is good and full from my lunch run today. If you ever pop in the one on Connecticut Ave during lunchtime, just tell them that the Juiceman sent ya. They’ll know who you’re talking about.

Peace & Love…

G. Mo

3 thoughts on “Shout-out to Julia’s Empanadas”

  1. I might need to give them a look. In Puerto Rico I had some “empanaditas” that were off the chain (basically the same thing). This post just made me hungry…

  2. thats around the corner from my office and well I’m glad someone else likes it 🙂 I mean they are OK but eh.. holla the next time u go there.. I’ll meet you

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