Don Pablo’s, Uptown’s Chilean Empanada Stop, Is Closed

Don Pablo’s Kitchen & Bakeshop, a Chilean empanada shop so popular that it utilized Tock, the platform used by upscale restaurants like Alinea, to sell food, has closed in Uptown. Founder Pablo Soto tells Eater that’s he’s searching for a location in the suburbs.

Don Pablo’s, named for Nobel Prize-winning Chilean poet and activist Pablo Neruda, closed on December 31, just over a month before its second anniversary at 1007 W. Argyle Street. “Our lease was up and [we] decided not to renew,” Soto writes in a text message. “Uptown wasn’t the right place for us and we are working on moving to the North Shore.”

Oddly, a move to suburban Chicago (Soto floated the possibility of Wilmette in an Instagram comment) would bring Don Pablo’s story full circle, as Soto and his wife, Julie Morrow-Soto, originally launched the bakeshop in May 2021 as a virtual operation in Glenview. They even intended to unveil a permanent location in Evanston until they discovered the space they’d chosen would need significantly more rehabilitation than anticipated. That turn of events brought the couple to Uptown, where they opened Don Pablo’s in February 2022 on Asia on Argyle, the neighborhood’s bustling Vietnamese-dominated corridor.

Chicago’s hospitality scene isn’t short on empanada options plenty of top-notch renditions of regional varieties that hail from Colombia, Venezuela, Argentina, Belize, the Philippines, and beyond. After the 2012 closure of Rapa Nui in Irving Park, however, it became challenging to find Chilean empanadas in local restaurants. Chilean empanadas are larger and more rectangular than their South American peers, and both baked and fried versions are ubiquitous throughout the country.

Stay tuned for news of Don Pablo’s new suburban location.