Last Saturday, when I finished my shift manning the INDY’s booth at the Festival for the Eno—a sweaty 40 minutes marked by a visit from one reader who wanted to share that our work is a “shell of what it used to be”—I was weary and in need of a snack.
I trudged over to the fairy circle of food vendors and started scanning prices. I was heading to a potluck within the hour, so I wanted to keep things cheap. Everything I saw cost at least $12. Then, salvation: $5 for a sweet corn arepa from Sarah’s Empanadas.
The arepa was so good, and so economical, that for this week’s column, I decided to visit the restaurant’s brick-and-mortar in Durham. Sarah’s Empanadas sits in a Research Triangle Park strip mall alongside a license plate agency, a fitness franchise, the newly opened Daughters Coffee & Books, the flagship Glass Jug Beer Lab, and brunch spots Dimsum Asian Bistro and True Flavors Diner.
Sarah’s has been around for decades. The restaurant’s website lists no founding date, and I couldn’t ask Sarah herself—she wasn’t there during my visit—but as testament to its longevity, I found a classified ad in a January 1996 Daily Tar Heel (“GREAT PART-TIME JOB”). My dad, who worked in RTP from 1995 until this year, immediately recited his regular lunch order when I mentioned I’d stopped by: “Two empanadas, side of rice and beans.”
Inside the restaurant, the decor exists outside any particular decade, or even century. One wall features a mural of Andean figures in traditional dress; the other walls are painted the sort of eye-popping colors you choose for your bedroom in fourth grade and then must endure through high school.
Vessels for music adorn the space: a pan flute, a drum with a stuffed llama head sticking out of the top, a chunky Sony speaker. Embroidered baby dolls dangle from a windowsill. A pumpkin-shaped sign reading “Welcome” hangs next to a miniature beach chair that’s been glued directly to the wall, as if waiting for a very small, seasonally confused customer.
The menu is comprised mainly of empanadas fried in wheat dough, with various fillings: meat (chicken, beef, steak, chorizo); veggie (broccoli, corn, spinach, mushroom, vegan chickpea); and a few regional riffs (shrimp & grits, Southern-style BBQ pork). There are also three Colombian empanadas on the menu, which use corn dough instead of wheat. The arepa lineup includes plantain, sweet corn, pork and corn, and plain cheese. Sides run the gamut from rice and beans to yuca fries, sweet or green plantains, and green beans.
Sarah’s offers a few combo deals, including my dad’s go-to, but they’re all empanada-only, and I want that arepa again (priced $1 cheaper in-store than at the festival). I order the sweet corn arepa, a spinach empanada, and rice and beans, which I calculate will come out to $10.80. In a pleasant surprise, the cashier—the same person who was working the festival, recognizable from his Spider-Man Crocs—charges me the combo price, $9.95, even though I’d technically ordered à la carte. With tax and tip, my total comes to $12.84.
I’ve gone over my $15 budget in the past three columns, and I have yet to get a vegetarian meal anywhere since starting this series. At Sarah’s, I break both curses at once.
There is tons of seating but just one other customer inside when I’m there, at 2 p.m. on a Thursday. His plate sits empty before him. When an employee comes by to ask if everything tasted okay, he closes his eyes and says, “Amazing.”
My food arrives 10 minutes after I order. The arepa is as scrumptious as I remember: thick, griddle-crisp, and desserty, with corn kernels that pop between my teeth and a pleasing cheese-pull. The rice is turmeric-yellow and dotted with peas and cubed carrots. Refried beans are spread across the top of the rice in a careful stripe.
The star, though, is the empanada. The crust gives way to a cheese-and-spinach filling that reminds me of the mixture I would steal spoonfuls of as a kid when my mom was making lasagna. It’s been fried gorgeously, pulled from the oil in the crucial 15-second window between doughy and overdone.
I get why Sarah’s has been around so long. Some shells hold up in any era.
Follow Staff Writer Lena Geller on Bluesky or email [email protected]. Comment on this story at [email protected].
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