Two years removed from a leukemia diagnosis, Laura Trahan still describes it as a punch in the face.
But now, Trahan, who was only months into her marriage and living in Argentina at the time, says it put her and her husband on a path of entrepreneurship and offering a product to south Louisiana: empanadas.
It was during that time when her Argentinian husband, Lucho Escudero, started using his mom’s recipe to make empanadas to help cure his homesickness. Once they began sharing them with friends, those friends loved them and had an idea.
Those empanadas could be a way to make money.
So they did. And after operating out of their home for less than a year, they were set to open in a shared space at 808 S. St. Blaise Lane, Suite C, in Youngsville over the weekend. They will be housed in the former Fixin’2 Be Fit location, which owner Angele Bulliard will rebrand.
“Everyone was always like, ‘Y’all really need to sell this. It’s so good,’ ” said Trahan, now nearly two years into remission thanks to a bone marrow transplant from her brother. “We just sold it out of our home, and it just grew so fast. It’s just a great opportunity for us to be able to get more out to everyone because the demand was getting higher and higher — way too big for our small kitchen.”
The business, , is a true side hustle for both — he does landscaping jobs, and she does landman work — but will open with just them working and taking pre-orders.
They only do it on weekends and try to sell at least 50 dozen each weekend. The empanadas — which are baked, unlike meat pies that are often deep fried — come in four varieties, each with their own shape: beef; ham and cheese; spinach and artichoke; and boudin pepper jack, along with three sauces.
The beef empanada, according to Argentine custom, also includes a boiled egg. Once baked, it's “magic inside a pastry,” Trahan said.
“People associate empanadas with the meat pie,” said Escudero, a native of San Rafael, Argentina. “But I have to explain the difference between the Argentine empanadas and the empanadas from the rest of the world. In Argentina, the empanada is something you can see at a fancy wedding or at the soccer game on Sunday. You can have empanadas with wine or with beer.”
It’s also the latest step in the lives of the husband-and-wife team that has now spanned at least four countries well before their 35th birthdays. They met while she taught English in Costa Rica, and they later moved to Chile before turmoil in the country made them relocate to his home country.
It was friends and family in Lafayette who helped raise money for her after her diagnosis. And now, she says, people are responding to their business in a similar way.
“Oh, man, it was so scary,” Escudero said of the diagnosis. “We were having a good life. But she’s an amazing human. And it blows my mind how cool this city is. Where I’m from, we have a good community, a small town kind of like Lafayette. But here is another level.”
