Viva Empanadas opens third restaurant on Congress Street

Viva Empanadas has opened its third Capital Region restaurant at 26 Congress Street in the Congress Plaza shopping center in Saratoga Springs, NEWS10 reported on Sept. 9, and the restaurant’s website now carries the line “Our New Saratoga Location is Now Open!” Owner Veronica Agama took over the space that was home to Moby Rick’s Seafood, a fish market that closed its location there earlier this year.

The Saratoga restaurant joins Agama’s counter at the Galleria 7 Market in Latham and her full-service restaurant on North Pearl Street in Albany. She had hoped to open in Saratoga by the end of June, but permitting delays pushed the opening past that target, the Saratoga Business Journal reported in May.

Viva Empanadas at a glance

Here are the basics, from the restaurant’s website and the NEWS10 report.

• Address: Viva Empanadas, 26 Congress Street, Saratoga Springs. Phone (518) 306-4398.
• Hours on the restaurant’s online ordering page as of Sept. 30: 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday, and 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. Thursday, with the restaurant closed Sunday and Monday. NEWS10 published different hours on Sept. 9, so call before a first visit.
• Online ordering for pickup and delivery is on the restaurant’s website. The company also builds custom catering orders for events, and the website sends catering requests to the Albany restaurant.
• The menu covers empanadas, arepas, Cuban beef tostones, shrimp ceviche, Cuban ropa vieja, churrasco, a Cuban sandwich and desserts, plus cocktails and wine.

From a park in Queens to Congress Plaza

Agama grew up in Ecuador and came to the United States at 18, according to the Saratoga Business Journal, working in restaurant kitchens that included an Argentine steakhouse in Queens. When the pandemic closed the restaurant where she worked in 2020, she was living in Queens with two sons, one of whom eats gluten-free and one of whom is vegetarian, Saratoga Living reported in April.

She started making empanadas at home with plantain and yuca crusts, the gluten-free doughs she knew from Ecuador, and friends began asking to buy them. She sold them in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, then moved to Brooklyn to run a food truck from 1 to 10 p.m. every day, according to Saratoga Living. Running short of kitchen space, she searched for a commercial kitchen she could afford and found it upstate. Viva Empanadas opened at Galleria 7 in Latham in 2022, and the Albany restaurant at 90 North Pearl Street followed in August 2024.

Saratoga came out of a staffing problem. Business in Albany is strong on nights with a show at the nearby Palace on Clinton Avenue and slow on nights without one, Agama told Saratoga Living, and a third restaurant gives her employees steadier hours. “I’m scared and happy and excited,” she said in April, before the doors opened.

What to order

The empanadas are the draw, and most are gluten-free because of how the doughs are made. The Saratoga online ordering menu prices single empanadas at $6.25 for most flavors, including these.

• Cuban Beef, a crisp corn crust filled with ropa vieja and mozzarella.
• Chicken Sofrito, a yuca crust filled with chicken breast slow-cooked in tomato, garlic and bell peppers.
• Spicy Chorizo, Mexican chorizo with cheese and potato in a corn crust.
• Veganlicious, lentil sofrito with mushrooms in a corn crust.
• Chilean Pino, a flaky wheat shell with beef, raisins, olives, boiled egg and caramelized onions, at $6.75.
• D’Verde, a green plantain crust with a four-cheese mix and scallions, sold as a pair for $11.

Any two empanadas are $11, and a half dozen is $32. Dessert empanadas, Nutella and banana or guava and cheese in a wheat crust, are $13.75 for two.

Beyond empanadas, the menu reaches across Latin America. Agama told Saratoga Living in April that she planned to lean harder into Argentine grilling in Saratoga, her favorite style of cooking, and described a room with flowers, tile work and a copper bar top. The Saratoga menu now carries these plates, according to the online ordering page.

• The Viva Special, three empanadas with yellow rice, beans and pico de gallo, is $21. A lunch version with two empanadas is $16.50, and the ordering page lists the lunch menu on weekdays from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
• Arepas and Cuban beef tostones are $17.50 each, and the shrimp ceviche is $21.
• Cuban ropa vieja, flank steak stewed with peppers, olives and capers, is $32, and a marinated grilled chicken parrilla is $29.75.
• The bandeja paisa, a platter with skirt steak, pork belly, chorizo, an arepa and a fried egg, is $40.75, and the churrasco skirt steak is $48.50.
• Desserts include a homemade Spanish flan at $11.99, and tres leches cake and guava cheesecake at $10 each.

Agama was waiting on a liquor license in April. The Saratoga menu now lists cocktails and wine, from Viva’s Spritz at $13.25 to a spicy guava margarita at $16.50, along with Spanish, Chilean and Argentine wines by the glass.

Agama has said she wants people to understand that South American food is not the same as spicy food. She told the Business Journal that Latin food is “diverse and really friendly to all tastes.”

Why it matters

Our read: Saratoga’s dining scene is heavy on Italian, American and Asian kitchens, and a full Latin menu with a long list of gluten-free options fills a real gap, especially for families juggling dietary needs. Congress Plaza also gets a restaurant in a space that had been a seafood market. The opening is a few weeks old, so expect the hours and menu to keep settling.

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