US1YFARE
Veteran
- Joined
- Mar 31, 2004
- Messages
- 3,932
- Reaction score
- 54
I challenge you to find any airline that is serving an "empanada" in first class - let alone a "Latino" empanada -whatever that might be.
AA serves chicken enchiladas in FC. It's not bad. And a lot of Latinos work at AA and fly AA. Hmmmm....perhaps Tempe misheard and was trying to copy AA and ordered the empanada instead of the enchilada. Or, perhaps the empanada was cheaper so they picked that. Yeah, that is probably more like it.
Interesting from Wikipedia:
In Spain, Portugal, the Caribbean, Latin America, and the Philippines, an empanada (Portuguese empada- a different dish) is essentially a stuffed pastry. The name comes from the Spanish verb empanar, meaning to wrap or coat in bread. Usually the empanada is made by folding a thin circular-shaped dough patty over the stuffing, creating its typical semicircular shape. Empanadas are also known by a wide variety of regional names (see the entries for the individual countries below).
It is likely that the empanadas in the Americas were originally from Galicia, Spain, where an empanada is prepared similar to a pie that is cut in pieces, making it a portable and hearty meal for working people. The Galician empanada is usually prepared with cod fish or chicken. Due to the large number of Galician immigrants in Latin America, the empanada gallega has also become very popular in that region. Middle Eastern cuisine to this day has similar foods, like simbusak (a fried, chickpea filled "empanada") from Iraq.
It seems that Tempe is really trying to put a Latino spin on everything...Tuna Burrito (which disgustingly enough also apparently has bread in it...gross) and now the Latino Chicken Empanada for the new "working class" customers Tempe is trying to attract. I thought they were going for the ALL AMERICAN experience--perhaps in Arizona this seems like the ALL AMERICAN experience, but everywhere else it is just, well, gross.