Empanadas From the Next-Gen of a Venezuelan Restaurant Family

“I made them take off the empanadas,” Jesus Villalobos says with a smirk. “I didn’t think the recipe was quite there.” He’s referring to the menu at Cachapas y Mas, his family’s Venezuelan restaurant, of which there are two locations in New York, known for its cachapas, patacónes, and more. Who better to give feedback than Villalobos, who grew up working in the family business, and has basically never left it? “He was right,” his mother, Jackeline Osorio says, proudly.

Playing around with the empanada recipe was the catalyst for Villalobos to open empanada shop Titi’s with his brother-in-law, Nate Ramm, in January at 160-4 Havemeyer Street. The Williamsburg shop continues to be a family affair: Villalobos’s mother helped develop the Titi’s recipes with them, and all the baking still happens in the Ridgewood location of Cachapas y Mas, brought over daily to Williamsburg. “I’m a good cook, but she’s a better cook,” he says of his mom. His aunt owned an empanada shop back in Maracaibo, Venezuela.

While Cachapas y Mas sticks to more traditional Venezuelan cooking, Titi’s takes “the best parts of Cachapas,” loved in its neighborhood precisely for being the type of place “normal people can go and have something familiar,” while offering something “fresh and modern” for the next-generation.

What defines a Venezuelan empanada is, of course, the corn, and “a little hint of sweetness,” Villalobos says. At Titi’s, there are corn, wheat, and plantain empanadas — all homemade. Villalobos sees the empanada as a locket, encapsulating memories in a shell.

Titi’s empanadas are New Yorkified — there’s an interpretation of the Argentinian choripan sandwich, served with chimichurri, and an empanada inspired by a sandwich he loves at Defonte’s in Red Hook. Another comes with oxtail. The special of the week on a recent visit was a jerk shrimp empanada. “If there’s a dish I love I’m going to try and figure out a way to put it in an empanada,” he says. “Titi’s isn’t Venezuelan food, really — I like to eat a million other things, keeping the New York identity first.”

Christian Rodriguez/Eater NY

Villalobos is still figuring out if he can pull off a chana empanada — it still needs tweaks. “It’s a hard business, you take some risks, but you have to have the marketable heavy-hitters that people know to come to you for,” he says.

There are other pastries beyond the empanadas, too: pan piñita (sweet milk rolls), pan de jamon, golfeados (cheese sticky buns), cachitos (a croissant-like pastry) — all homemade. He’s considering expanding into wholesale. One could imagine it inside pastry cases of cafes like his own.

Titi’s aims to appeal to a younger set (with a knack for what plays well on social media where the shop has more than 33K followers), and Villalobos knows many may experience it without being aware of the connection to the family’s other businesses. But how do you honor your family’s legacy, while bringing it into 2024? That’s something that’s fueled him to keep showing up, even on his hardest days.

On a recent visit to Titi’s, several postal workers in uniform sidled up to the counter to buy an afternoon snack while “D.A.N.C.E.” by Justice played on the speakers. Villalobos tells me that later that weekend, they will prepare food for a block party honoring Toñita’s, the nearby legendary Caribbean social club, a hold-out in the fastly gentrifying neighborhood.

Even in its lane as something new, Titi’s stays true to its roots as a neighborhood spot. It’s a tone set by his parents’ businesses — the kind of spots the city subcontracted to make meals for incoming migrants.

With Cachapas y Mas, the story goes that in 2005, Villalobos’s dad, Larry Villalobos, a taxi cab driver, one day woke up, and without telling the family, bought a food truck. He decided to station it at a Washington Heights mechanic shop. Then called El Dugout Fast Food, it was across from a club, and customers lined up down the block late into the night.

Larry Villalobos went on to open a full-on storefront in Inwood under the Cachapas y Mas name, and more recently, a location in Ridgewood. At some point, he had a mobile food truck that didn’t work out. When I visit Titi’s, Villalobos says his father is out of town on a business trip — working on their first out-of-state Cachapas y Mas in Lawrence, Massachusetts. It’s in an area with a Dominican enclave, a loyal customer base for the Venezuelan restaurant.

The younger Villalobos has been involved with his family’s food endeavors since the age of 12. Fast forward a few years, and he started getting more hands-on.

“When I was playing around with food, one day I just had this moment, where I realized there was nothing else I wanted to do,” he says, adding that he went to college thinking he wouldn’t work at Cachapas. “I get bored, I love the chaos,” he says.

With Titi’s especially, he has put in a lot of work to learn the pastry side. And about those Cachapas y Mas empanadas? Well, they’re back on their menu. And, thankfully, it's a recipe that everyone in the family can agree on.

Of Titi’s, Villalobos says, “I want this to be the kind of place an 80-year-old man can come to have coffee every day, alongside a 23-year-old kid, who came in because he saw it on Instagram.”