For the love of just one empanada, I would return to San Juan, Puerto Rico, tomorrow

You always want to get the 'lay of the land' your first day in a city. It's that first day, while roaming streets close to your place - where you decide whether or not you're going to rent a car and visit the rest of the island, or maybe just hang out in a piazza, marketplace, or a dive bar.

San Juan, Puerto Rico offers the opportunity for all three. There's a lovely piazza, streets and history and more than a beggar's choice of dive bars. At night the salsa music and locals create their own steam.

But what haunts me, and makes me want to go back one day is a simple little meat stuffed pastry thing called an empanada. Not just any empanada. Birra and Empanada's.

Don't get me wrong. Of course I've had an empanada before. We have a healthy Latin-American community where I live, and I've tried them here. And sorry, Surrey. I wasn't impressed most of the time. What I've had up until now was a doughy bread like pastry that was missing flavour and a feeble stuffing of slightly seasoned meat of some sort.

But in San Juan, as we roamed the streets, we were just a block away from our hotel (Decanter) on Calle de la Cruz which is aptly named, as the Way of the Cross goes down that street on the Good Friday Procession every Easter Week. There was a little open door over a sign that said Birra and Empanadas.

It was hot. We were thirsty. I hadn't tried Puerto Rico's favourite drink (Pina Colada) yet, although we were hoping to go to the original later that day.

Birra and Empanadas. A simple name (Beer and Empanadas) for a dive bar that was popular with the locals, from what a peek in told us. There was one table available in the little place and we took it and was promptly met by a waiter who took our order for a beer and a pina colada.

"Any Empanada?" He asked.

I thought, well, there's no real menu. I saw a little display cabinet in the corner (much like a pie box in a diner or gas station where they sell nearly toxic meats and so-called food) Their little oven showed some empanadas being kept warm. Normally my inner spidey sense would tell me now dangerous this kind of food would be for my sensitive digestive system, but I was hungry and said yes.

"What kind? Chicken, pork, beef or chorizo?", he asked.

"Chorizo." we both answered. Just one. We'll share.

Within a few minutes he showed up with our beverages, and a bottle of pineapple mango hot sauce, and a large crispy concoction.

That's where, if I could go back in time, I would have said, "one of each, por favor. No, make that two of everything".

It isn't often you experience something so delicious it haunts you. I'll never have an empanada with such a delicious, crispy. buttery crust, that once opened, reveals a full compliment of savoury meat and onion, seaoned to perfection. And married with that home-made hot sauce? Suffice it to say. I'm writing this almost a month later and the experience of that first bite haunts me. I'm a good cook, but I haven't got a clue how they made this thing so magically memorable.

Then of course, reading the reviews of this place, I discover that the best one is pork. Not chorizo.

There's a litany of reasons to visit San Juan. I would like to return during Holy Week again, although the tourists say it's not as fun, because it's too religious.

I'm thinking to myself, if there's less tourists. that means more room at Birra and Empanada. Count me in.