A Salt Lake City cafe serves up a taste of South America

Hello, Eaters! Argentina’s Cafe, at 655 E. 400 South in Salt Lake City, is a new coffee shop that’s all about Argentinian empanadas, pastries, coffee and culture.

I visited Argentina’s Cafe recently and had a nice chat with owner Valentina Udabe (who lots of folks just call Tina, or Vale).

Udabe said there aren’t a lot of Argentinian places around, so she’s been having people come from all over to try her cafe’s pastries. However, she said Argentina’s Cafe is for everyone, “not just for Argentinians.”

(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) Tables line the patio at Argentina's Cafe in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, March 24, 2026.

Origin story: Udabe started her business in Park City, after she came to Utah from Argentina in 2013. She opened Tina’s Bakery in 2021, with empanadas as the star menu item, and had a couple incarnations of that business until she closed it in 2025.

Udabe opened Argentina’s Cafe in January, after doing a complete rebrand to better feature her Argentinian roots. Her logo’s colors (light blue and white) and the silhouette of a sun are callbacks to the Argentinian flag. Argentina’s Cafe also has a food truck.

The vibe: Since she comes from the lush jungle part of Argentina, Udabe said she wanted to create a space that was “green and jungly, and modern but cozy.” She and her husband made the tables themselves, using photos of subtropical greenery and animals.

I found the cafe to be warm and welcoming, with plenty of plants and spots to curl up with a coffee and pastry. There’s also a patio that will be nice when the weather warms up.

(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) A patron waits for their orders at Argentina's Cafe in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, March 24, 2026.

The menu: Hearty, savory empanadas (available baked and fried, but baked is traditional), Argentinian sandwiches (like the beef milanese, made with fried steak) and traditional cookies called alfajors. The menu also features a variety of “facturas,” which are pastries made with laminated dough with different fillings that Udabe said Argentinians have with their morning coffee or afternoon tea. She also sells whole cakes, for your next celebration. To read about my order, scroll down to “Dish of the Week.”

The hours: Open seven days a week, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Live deliciously,

Kolbie

Food News

• Empanada Fest last Saturday was a blast. The winners were Arepon Venezolano (Venezuelan empanadas) for Best Flavor, The Golden Crunch (Colombian fried empanadas) for Best Presentation, and La Cubana (Cuban/Miami empanadas) for Best Empanada. If you’d like to try out the winning empanadas, you can find Arepon at 656 E. 11400 South in Draper; The Golden Crunch does pickup and delivery; and La Cubana is a food truck that roams around.

• The Wasatch Community Gardens annual Spring Plant Sale is coming up on Saturday, May 9, from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., and will be held at the Utah State Fairpark at 155 N. 1000 West. It may still be a few weeks away, but now is the time to browse the catalog of annual and perennial plant starts and begin compiling your shopping list. The catalog includes 200+ vegetable varieties, 70+ tomato varieties, 45+ pepper varieties and much more, and all of the starts were raised from seed by participants of Wasatch Community Gardens’ Job Training Program, serving women facing homelessness.

• Adam Moran, the competitive eater who runs the YouTube account BeardMeatsFood, on Sunday posted his fourth video from a recent Utah visit. This time, he took the “Liberty Bell Challenge” at the Brookers Founding Flavors Ice Cream shop at 568 N. Mill Road in Vineyard (one of the chain’s 10 Utah locations). Brookers follows an Independence Day theme — which made Moran, a Brit, feel like a Redcoat. The Liberty Bell Monumental Sundae includes 13 scoops of ice cream, plus four scoops of dry toppings, four pumps of liquid toppings, whipped cream, nuts, “patriotic sprinkles” and cherries. If you eat it in the record time, you get the sundae and a T-shirt for free. Last month, Moran posted a video in which he consumed the “Kitchen Sink” sundae at Angie’s diner in Logan.

Openings:

• Fini Pizza and Fini Cafe will be opening next Saturday, May 2, at 875 N. Main St., Suite A, in Vineyard, in the mixed-use development known as Utah City. Fini Pizza got its start in Brooklyn, New York, and serves, of course, New York-style pizza.

• In national restaurant franchise news, Panda Express has opened a new location in West Haven at 3042 W. 4000 South; Einstein Bros. Bagels has opened a new location in Tooele at 2457 N. Main St., Suite A; and Dave’s Hot Chicken has opened a new location at 119 Crossroads Blvd. in Saratoga Springs.

Closings:

• Redditors reported last week that Yoshi’s Japanese Grill at 516 E. 300 South in Salt Lake City is now closed. I called the Murray location at 5692 S. 900 East, which is still open, and an employee confirmed that the location on 300 South had indeed closed.

• Ford’s Locker, a game meat processor at 776 N. 500 West in Provo, “will not be coming back” after it was destroyed in a fire on Dec. 15, according to a Facebook post. An article from The Daily Herald said all of the wild game inside the business waiting to be processed was burned in the fire, and in Ford’s Facebook post, the business said it plans to put a portion of the proceeds from the sale of the property toward reimbursing the costs of those hunts. “Thank you for being such a vital part of our 80-year history,” the post said.

Dish of the Week

(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) Traditional beef empanadas, medialunas and a dulce du leche latte are seen at Argentina's Cafe in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, March 24, 2026.

Valentina Udabe recommended all of the most popular things at Argentina’s Cafe, so I enjoyed a traditional beef empanada ($6.50), a medialuna ($5) and an iced dulce de leche latte ($7).

I loved all of these things, for different reasons. The empanada was just bursting with flavor, filled with rich beef, sauteed onions, scallions, parsley, green olives and hard-boiled eggs. It was so satisfying biting into this hefty meat pie — just be prepared with a napkin for your hands.

The medialuna (my Spanish-speaking dining companion told me “medialuna” means “half moon” — cool!) was soft and sweet, like a croissant but without the crispiness. It had a glaze on top flavored with orange, cinnamon and nutmeg, and I can’t get it out of my head. It was the perfect companion for the dulce de leche latte, which was caramel-y and sweet but not overly so.