Eater NY Pays Tribute To Empaguetadas And Washington Heights

WASHINGTON HEIGHTS, NY — In a recent article for Eater NY, Mike Diago paid tribute and provided a history on the tradition of Dominican families from the Bronx and Washington Heights making the day trip to Harriman Park, otherwise called Los Siete Lagos, and enjoying a day outside while eating empaguetadas.

Harriman State Park is the second-largest state park in New York, located in Rockland and Orange Counties 30 miles north of New York City, some 45 minutes away from Washington Heights.

Dominicans starting coming from Northern Manhattan and The Bronx to Los Siete Lagos in the 1970s, and their presence at the state park and beach has only grown along with the influx of Dominicans in NYC over the past decades.

The New York Metropolitan area is currently home to around 641,000 foreign-born Dominicans, which is about seven times more than the next biggest population center outside of the DR, according to the Migration Policy Institute.

While Diago goes into the history of Harriman Park, the story's central focus is empaguetadas.

The empaguetadas dish is a pot of spaghetti in a homemade criollo red sauce served with meat and vegetables.

Here's how Diago describes the dish:

"While the exact contents of each pot varied, most had a few things in common: The pasta itself was broken into small pieces and purposely cooked until soft, not al dente, and tossed in a tomato-based sauce made with garlic, onion, peppers, annatto (achiote), and butter. Some finished their sauce with a can of Carnation evaporated milk; others added a few extra ingredients like olives, smoked pork chops, or chicken. Pan sobao or pan de agua (soft, chewy loaves of bread, about the size of a hoagie roll) accompanied just about every pot, which most families made some attempt to keep warm (though lukewarm empaguetadas is not a deal breaker)."

The article also provides a history of how spaghetti became a popular dish in the Dominican Republic with the influx of Italian migration in the country in the late 19th century and the creation of the first domestic pasta factory by dictator Rafael Trujillo in the 1950s.

You can read more about how empaguetadas became such a popular beach day dish for Dominicans in Washington Heights and The Bronx, here: Sun, Sand, and Spaghetti.