{"id":5061632,"date":"2025-09-22T15:38:05","date_gmt":"2025-09-22T19:38:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/malatinonews.com\/?p=5061632"},"modified":"2025-09-22T15:38:05","modified_gmt":"2025-09-22T19:38:05","slug":"sazon-de-brookline-small-bites-of-dominican-cuisine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinonewsnetwork.com\/maln\/2025\/09\/22\/sazon-de-brookline-small-bites-of-dominican-cuisine\/","title":{"rendered":"Saz\u00f3n de Brookline: Small Bites of Dominican Cuisine"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Sizzling in the oil, the empanadas bubbled up and glazed in a light golden color. With a small bite, juicy pulled beef, wrapped with a crispy dough, fills a watery mouth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Keneddy Lavour makes empanadas from scratch, including the dough.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI want everybody to try real empanadas, how I had it when I was a kid,\u201d Keneddy Lavour, the owner of Bocadillos<\/a> at 293 Cypress Street in Brookline, MA, and a Dominican Republic native, said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lavour has always loved food. Growing up with his grandmother Anastacia, Lavour said his grandmother is the kind of person who takes forever to cook. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI always go around and sneak into the kitchen, tryna see what\u2019s going on. And be like, \u2018oh when is the food gonna be ready,\u2019\u201d Lavour chuckled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lavour spent his teenage years cooking for himself when his mother was busy with work. Since then, cooking has always been his passion. For him, there is nothing prouder than seeing the smile on his customer\u2019s face after taking that first bite. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou look at them, smiling and nodding, to say that the food is great,\u201d Lavour said. \u201cThat makes me feel that my work is being acknowledged, enjoyed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Food is much more than just sustenance, Lavour said. It brings people together, and it means sharing the moments you spend with your family and friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you go to islands and have empanadas at the beach, and when you come back to have an empanada as well, that reminds you of your trip to the island\u2014white sand, blue sky, perfect weather,\u201d Lavour said, thinking about his favorite beach, Juan Dolio<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After high school, Lavour came to the United States with his mother and started attending Le Cordon Bleu College in Cambridge. He attended cooking school from noon to 8 p.m., and supported himself by taking overnight shifts from 10:30 p.m. to 7 a.m. at Brigham and Women\u2019s Hospital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Keneddy Lavour sits at Bocadillos. Behind him, a friend of his painted the mural to create a Caribbean vibe for the restaurant.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Once he graduated, Lavour worked his way up from being a busser at a Portuguese restaurant to the general manager, from cleaning dishes and bringing food to the table to managing three floors at Legal Sea Foods Harborside and operating two restaurants at Encore Boston Harbor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, Lavour had always wanted to open his own place, so after he left Encore to spend more time with his three-year-old son, Lavour started working on recipes and frying empanadas in his apartment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was crazy because the apartment was really tiny, and we were frying like a hundred something empanadas,\u201d Lavour said. \u201cYou have no fan, nothing, so all the fumes from the oil started accumulating on the [ceiling].\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What made it worse was the pandemic, making it impossible to sell at events or drive for Uber to make ends meet. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy son has asthma, so I didn\u2019t want to compromise going out, getting sick, and getting my son sick,\u201d Lavour said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lavour made it through the pandemic with some deliveries and a lot of debt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI cannot see myself doing anything else, even with going into debt,\u201d he said. \u201cBut when you are so certain about something, you just make it work.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eventually, Lavour was able to secure a deal with the owner of Brother\u2019s Roast Beef and bought the place, which came with all the equipment he needed. Looking back, Lavour said it was scary for the first couple of days when he finally opened his first restaurant in June.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou put in a big sum of money into this place. It\u2019s like when you go all in. This is going to work or \u2026 I don\u2019t want to say be homeless, but like be homeless,\u201d Lavour laughed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since its opening, Bocadillos has been growing, and people are starting to know the little empanada place sitting in the corner of Cypress Street and Franklin Street.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t really have a marketing budget to make sure it gets to everybody, but slowly, people are realizing that it\u2019s here,\u201d Lavour said. \u201cAs long as people like my empanadas, I\u2019m gonna keep doing it.\u201d
Bocadillos will join Taste of Brookline<\/a> on September 27, and it also has a spot at various farmers’ markets in Davis Square<\/a>, Medford<\/a>, Waltham<\/a>, and Needham<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Photo Credit: <\/strong>Xiaoya Shao<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>
\n

Xiaoya Shao<\/strong> is a reporter from the College of Communication at Boston University. Recently graduated with a bachelor degree in journalism and a minor in English, she is excited to continue practicing journalism in written as well as visual form. She is now freelancing at local newspapers in Boston and interning at Boston Neighborhood Network, a community access news program. <\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since its opening, Bocadillos has been growing, and people are starting to know the little empanada place sitting in the corner of Cypress Street and Franklin 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