If there's a definitive Buenos Aires-style empanada, this might be it. Set to celebrate its 100th anniversary, Pin Pun is a classic pizza parlor known for its bold, deep-fried empanadas, each hiding a signature whole green olive inside. It's a transportive experience, with the scent of melting cheese and frying dough filling the air. Best of all? It’s open 24 hours, making it an ideal spot for a satisfying empanada, day or night.

For a taste of Salta, head to this Palermo spot where owner Gonzalo Alderete Pagés built a traditional clay oven before doing anything else. He follows the sacred rules of salteña-making: the empanadas are small (no more than 12cm), filled with knife-cut beef, potato, and egg, and baked in a wood-fired oven. They are served piping hot with a side of spicy llajua sauce. Be sure to save room for the incredible homemade desserts, like a generations-old chocolate mousse recipe.

To taste an empanada from Tucumán—a province famed for its baking—visit this hybrid pizza parlor and café. The founder learned his craft from the champions at Argentina's National Empanada Contest. While the traditional flank steak empanada is excellent, the star here is the sweet corn empanada. Unlike most creamy versions, this one is filled with whole corn kernels and coated in sugar before baking. It's a perfect example of tradition with a creative twist.

Revived a few years ago, this 1920s pizzería-bar now turns out some excellent wood-fired empanadas. The homemade dough picks up smoke from a quebracho-fueled oven, while the fillings stay classic porteño with a little edge: spicy beef, wood-roasted chicken and caramelized onion, and portobellos and mozzarella. Order two for a snack, three or more as a meal, and chase them with a glass of house vermouth while taking in the old Buenos Aires room.

Some of the best empanadas in the city, our favorites here are filled with chopped beef, potato, egg, and green olive and fried to order so they're hot, crisp, yet not greasy. They come with a proper spicy sauce and they don't skimp on the filling. The small shop on Avenida Independencia has walls covered in folk saint figures, framed photos of Evita, and vintage collectibles that make it feel more like an antique shop than an empanada counter.

This tiny, no-frills hole-in-the-wall in Recoleta is famous for one of the most unusual and memorable empanadas you'll find: the Pikachu. Named for its spicy (picante) kick, this savory-sweet creation combines cheese, caramelized onion, and spices inside a distinctive, thick yellow dough—a secret recipe from the founding family's home province of Catamarca. It’s a beloved institution known for consistency and tradition.

In a city where empanada almost always implies beef, Vecindá flips the ratio: vegetables lead, meat makes a cameo. A clay oven sits center-stage, and every pastry gets a rapid blast of wood-heat before it hits the counter. The menu skews plant-forward with fillings like Pascualinda with spinach, coconut béchamel, toasted almonds or Shariff stuffed with texturized soy, red pepper, baharat, dried apricot, mint chimichurri. For traditionalists, there's one beef option, listed as Clandestina.

TayTay deals strictly in Bolivian salteñas: football-shaped, palm-sized empanadas whose glossy, faintly sweet dough hides a ladle of hot stew. The lineup stays tight with favorites like chicken, pucakapa (cheese, onion, ají), and classic beef. The drill is always the same: bite a vent, let the steam out, tilt, sip the insides, bite some more, devour. A side of house llajua (tomato-ají salsa) is mandatory.