When Celebrities Talk About Argentinian Empanadas

Which celebrities love Argentinian empanadas?

The list below is built around what is actually verifiable, not what would sound good on a marketing brochure. The criteria are simple. Either the figure is Argentinian and Argentinian food is documented as part of their cultural identity, or they have spoken publicly about empanadas in interviews, social posts, or food-content appearances. Anything thinner than that has been left out.

The pattern that runs through all of them is the same. Trend food gets introduced, explained, filmed like an event. Comfort food just shows up in someone's hands, mid-conversation, like it belongs there. That is what keeps happening with Argentinian empanadas in music, film, sport, and public life. Empanadas pop up in moments that feel unscripted, familiar, and strangely universal. The wider story of how Argentinian food took root in Sydney sits in our guide to Argentinian food in Sydney.

This is not about endorsements. It is about cultural gravity.

Did Pope Francis eat empanadas at the Vatican?

Pope Francis (Jorge Mario Bergoglio), the first Argentinian pope, made his love of Argentinian food a consistent thread across his papacy. He was born in Buenos Aires to an Italian-Argentinian family and never disguised it. On his 2015 US visit, Pope Francis was gifted Argentinian empanadas and shared them with the press travelling with him, a detail Time magazine reported as the kind of small human gesture that defined his pontificate.

The pattern is bigger than one trip. Empanadas appear repeatedly in commentary about Pope Francis's cultural roots and the everyday foods that anchored memory and belonging for him, as noted in coverage of his food references and teachings. Argentinian empanadas were not a brand moment. They were a piece of home that travelled with him. The full Argentum founding story sits in From Buenos Aires to Bondi.

What does Lionel Messi say about Argentinian food?

Lionel Messi is the most famous Argentinian alive, and Argentinian food is a documented constant in his life. Reporting from his Barcelona, Paris, and Miami years repeatedly notes that his household maintains an Argentinian kitchen, that asados (Argentinian barbecues), milanesas, and empanadas are weekly staples, and that family gatherings around food are part of the routine he and his wife Antonela Roccuzzo are openly attached to.

Messi has been featured in cooking and food-related content several times, and the recurring detail is the same. When the topic is comfort food, the answer is Argentinian. The pattern is not unique to him. It is something close to a Argentinian footballing tradition that runs through Diego Maradona's well-documented attachment to traditional Argentinian food, through Sergio Aguero's frequent references to cooking Argentinian dishes during his Premier League years at Manchester City, and through Manu Ginobili (the Argentinian NBA legend who won four championships with the San Antonio Spurs) frequently being photographed at Argentinian-food events in Texas.

The point is that for Argentinian sports figures abroad, food is one of the most reliable threads back to identity. Empanadas, milanesas, dulce de leche, mate. None of it requires explanation inside an Argentinian household. It is just what is on the table on a Sunday. The same gravity is what makes Argentinian food cluster on Sydney cafe menus a generation after the migration arrived.

Did Rosalia film empanada-making in Argentina?

Yes, and it was one of the more widely shared food moments of her recent touring years. During her time in Argentina, Rosalia appeared in widely circulated Instagram clips learning to make empanadas with local chefs. It is casual, curious, unpolished in the best way.

What made it spread was not the celebrity name. It was the framing. No "trying Argentinian food for the first time" voiceover. No forced reaction. No performance. Empanadas were not treated as exotic. They were treated as obvious. The same way pasta is treated when an international visitor films a kitchen visit in Italy. Empanadas got the equivalent treatment in Buenos Aires. That is how you know something is culturally embedded. The food does not need translation.

Why did Ricardo Darin's empanada comment make international news?

Most foods do not trigger national debate. In Argentina, empanadas can.

Ricardo Darin, one of Argentina's most recognised actors (best known internationally for the Oscar-winning The Secret in Their Eyes), made a televised comment about how expensive a dozen empanadas had become. The line sparked major coverage and a public back-and-forth with figures in President Milei's government. The story moved from a TV conversation to political response to international reporting from Bloomberg within days.

The reason it landed is that the empanada is so baseline to Argentinian daily life that the price of a dozen functions as a household inflation marker, the way the price of a pint of milk or a flat white might in Australia. When a country's most recognisable comfort food becomes the example politicians and journalists reach for, you have learned something important about that food. It is not niche. It is a cultural reference point.

What about Pedro Pascal and Latin American celebrities who love empanadas?

Pedro Pascal (Chilean-American, born in Santiago) has talked about empanadas in widely shared food content, including "Snack Wars" clips where empanadas come up as part of comfort and cultural nostalgia. Chilean empanadas (larger, baked, classic pino filling of beef, onion, hard-boiled egg, raisin, and a black olive) sit alongside Argentinian ones in the Latin American empanada family, and Pascal has been clear that the food is part of how he stays connected to home.

The broader Latin diaspora pattern is consistent. Sofia Vergara (Colombian) has talked about Colombian-style empanadas (corn dough, deep-fried, distinctly different from the Argentinian baked-or-fried wheat-dough version) in interviews and on her social channels. Eva Mendes (Cuban-American) has spoken about pan-Latin food culture, including empanadas, in cooking-adjacent press. Salma Hayek (Mexican-American) is less specifically tied to empanadas but has built a sustained advocacy for Latin American food on her own platforms. The wider pattern: when Latin American celebrities talk about food publicly, empanadas are part of the conversation more often than any pan-region staple except possibly rice and beans. They are the format almost every Latin country has its own version of, which is why they keep appearing in cross-cultural food press.

What this tells you about Argentinian-style empanadas specifically is something subtle. They are part of a family of foods, all of them deeply loved, but the Argentinian version (smaller, folded with the repulgue seal, baked or fried in beef tallow, region-specific fillings such as Tucuman or Salteno style) has carved out its own identity inside that family. The mainland story of where Argentinian empanadas fit globally sits in our piece Argentinian food beyond empanadas.

Are empanadas popular in the global Argentinian diaspora?

This is where the article gets interesting for Sydney. There are roughly 4 million Argentinians living outside Argentina, with the largest communities in Spain, Italy, the United States, Israel, and increasingly Australia. Wherever Argentinians settle in numbers, two food businesses tend to follow within a generation: parrilla (Argentinian steakhouse) and empanaderias (empanada specialists). It is the same pattern Italians followed with pizzerias and gelaterias a hundred years earlier.

In Sydney specifically, this is a recent and accelerating story. The Argentinian community here is small but visible, especially around the Eastern Suburbs and Inner West, and Argentinian rugby and football players who have come through Australian Super Rugby and A-League seasons over the years have repeatedly spoken about missing traditional Argentinian food. Argentinian visitors to Sydney often cite the lack of dulce de leche, decent mate, and proper empanadas as the things they notice first.

That gap is closing. Argentum was built specifically to close it for the Sydney market. We make Argentinian-style empanadas in a commercial kitchen in Bondi Beach, and the customers split surprisingly evenly between Australians discovering the category, expats from across Latin America who want a Sunday taste of home, and the broader Sydney food crowd who have read about empanadas everywhere and want to try the real thing. Perfect for picnics, boat parties, or birthday celebrations. Our city shortlist for what is worth knowing sits in best empanadas Sydney.

What all these moments have in common

Across every example in this article, the same pattern shows up:

• The empanada appears casually, not as a "food moment"
• The reaction is familiarity, not discovery
• The food connects to identity, memory, or daily life
• Nobody needs to explain why it matters
• The reference is recognised by the audience without footnotes

Trends get posted. Comfort gets repeated. Empanadas keep repeating, decade after decade, mouth after mouth, country after country, in a way that very few foods manage. The wider story of how Argentinian food took root in Sydney sits in our Argentinian food in Sydney guide, and our founding story is in From Buenos Aires to Bondi.

Where can fans of these celebrities try authentic Argentinian empanadas in Sydney?

If celebrity moments are doing the awareness work, the everyday work happens at home. Argentum makes Argentinian-style empanadas in a commercial kitchen in Bondi Beach. Five active flavours (Carnivore, Athlete, Classic, the vegan Patagonia, and Habibi Yalla). Frozen by default for retail, baked or fried in beef tallow for catering and markets. Sydney metro delivery, minimum order $48.

Start with the Chef's Box ($85, all five flavours), browse our empanadas, or get in touch for catering and corporate events.

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