Shizuoka’s Empanada Entrepreneur

By Astrid Walmer

Akihabara News (Tokyo) — Mara Arguello is an Argentinian entrepreneur who established a catering business called Raices (roots in Spanish) in Shizuoka four years ago.

She specializes in homemade Argentinian dishes, which in pre-pandemic times she used to sell at numerous food fairs all over the prefecture.

Raices’ most popular dish above all is empanadas.

Empanadas owe their creation to the Arab stuffed pie fatayer and in Spanish it means “stuffed in bread.” It was brought by the Spaniards to Central and South America, and today each Latin American country has its own regional recipe.

“In Argentina, for the gauchos who worked long days in the Pampas handling livestock, the empanada were easy to carry and didn’t easily spoil. They are packed with protein since they contain minced beef, sauteed with onions, hard boiled eggs, olives, and raisins. From its humble beginnings, today the empanada is a popular street food that’s also prepared in many homes,” explains Arguello.

The youngest of five sisters with a single working mother, her mother divided the household chores amongst the girls, assigning a specific chore to each of them. At age 12, Arguello became the one in charge of cooking for her family, and from then on went every weekend to learn how to cook with her French grandmother.

In an unusual twist of fate, she married a Japanese chef who owned a restaurant in Buenos Aires. Since cooking was no longer her main duty, she soon discovered that she wasn’t up to being a housekeeper.

Laughingly, she recalls the time when she did a load of laundry without separating it into different colors, only to realize that they had bled.

“Trying to fix the mess, I poured bleach on the pile of clothes, which made it even worse!”

Arguello’s ability to use humor to diffuse tension by joking about her mistakes adds to her strength of character, helping her with life’s difficulties.

In the late 1980s, during the government of President Carlos Menem, Argentina was hit hard by a financial crisis due to hyperinflation. Forced to close the restaurant in Buenos Aires, Arguello’s husband decided to return to Japan, bringing her along with him.

Their project was to establish a staff recruitment agency that assisted foreigners in searching for employment with Japanese manufacturers. Although very successful for a number of years, the agency collapsed with the end of the Japanese economic bubble.

The financial strain also ended their marriage. Arguello, suddenly on her own, was in dire need of a job, which led her to work as an assembly line worker for a phone manufacturer.

“The hours were long and earnings meager as female workers were paid less than male coworkers,” she reminisces. ”Nonetheless, it was a positive experience as it forced me to focus on the circuit board in front of me. Gradually, I stopped ruminating about the end of my marriage and my former business.”

The factory gig provided her with much needed time to heal while allowing her to pay for food and shelter.

Eventually, she realized that she had to find a way to reinvent herself in Japan. It was at that point when she decided to go back to her roots, by establishing her own catering business and fittingly named it Raices.

Fast forward to 2020 when the Covid pandemic hit, affecting her income badly.

However, thanks to a loan for small businesses from the Japanese government, she was able to convert her garage into an industrial kitchen in order to produce and sell Argentinian food online.

In the agricultural town of Kikugawa, where she currently lives, farmers often leave their fresh produce on an unattended spot by the roadside with a money box for passersby to purchase. Inspired by this very Japanese way of selling based on trust, every Friday Arguello’s empanadas are placed on a case left by the entrance of Raices.

When asked why she opted to stay in Japan instead of returning back home to Argentina, she explains that, “I feel that I still haven’t proved myself, the agency was run together with my ex-husband, and since he is Japanese I depended a lot on his knowledge of the language and culture. He acted like a filter that smoothed my path in this country.”

She concludes that Raices is like a child that she wants to raise and see successfully grow. Her aim is for her empanadas to become popular, since they are tasty, affordable, and can be eaten anywhere just like onigiri.

When talking about her future objectives, she mentions that she would like to introduce other delicious recipes that she learned from her grandmother into the menu.

“Now it’s different. I’m alone and I depend on myself to achieve my goals,” she concludes.

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