Estefania Bozzalla was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in the
early 1980s. When she was a young child, at the tail end of
Leopoldo Galtieri’s military dictatorship, her parents immigrated
to the United States, and she has lived in California ever since.

For the past eight years, Bozzalla and her husband,
Shane Twilla, whom she met when they were both teenagers working
at a local Red Lobster, have run Sacramento’s only Argentinian
eatery. They do so with an assist from her parents. Her father,
Ruben Bozzalla, provided the original recipes and has worked at
the food truck since he retired from his job at a Bay Area radio
station in 2023; Bozzalla’s mother, Francesca, often helps
at the cash register. 

Buenos Aires Grill is a low-key, blue food truck, decorated with
a decal of a bright yellow sun, the same sun that adorns the
Argentinean national flag. In that mobile kitchen, they travel
from one farmers’ market to the next, adding in private functions
along the way. Like most food trucks, they post their schedule on
Instagram, allowing their dedicated fans to easily find them.

The food truck’s banner — which Bozzalla and Twilla prop up in
front of their service window whenever they stop — declares them
to be “world champions of empanadas.” Argentina being
soccer-crazy, the banner’s words are accompanied by a large,
doctored photo of Lionel Messi sitting atop a teammate’s
shoulders and holding up a huge, much larger-than-life empanada.

Argentinian cuisine is known for its copious use of meat, in
keeping with the country’s robust livestock industry — its
parrillada dishes are heavy on various cuts of steak, sausages,
chicken and, in places, lamb. Its empanadas are a popular
lunchtime snack. Its homegrown wines are as good as any on earth.
Its pastry shops are as elegant as any that one could find in
Paris or Vienna. Home to millions of people descended from a wave
of Italians who immigrated to the country in the late 19th and
early 20th centuries, Argentina also has some of the best Italian
restaurants anywhere outside of Italy.

Given Sacramentans’ well-documented love of good eats, one would
have thought that the city would be home to many Argentinian
restaurants. It’s not. There are plenty of Brazilian dining
establishments in Sacramento and the surrounding area, but Buenos
Aires Grill has an apparent monopoly on Argentinian cuisine,
drawing in the handful of Argentinian expats in the region as
well as local foodies eager to expand their palates. 

Shane Twilla prepares Buenos Aires Grill’s signature “messy
fries.” (Photo by Sasha Abramsky)

For Bozzalla and Twilla, that’s a hole in
the market they have taken delight in filling, creating a fusion
cuisine in their mobile eatery that blends traditional
Argentinian flavors and dishes with names more familiar to a
stateside audience. For $18, customers can buy chicken or
“choripán” sandwiches — the latter being a sliced sausage,
something like a hot dog, Twilla explains, only far better; for
$19, one can purchase a hearty steak sandwich. 

If you are willing to part with $22, you can get a huge plate of
“messy fries,” essentially a heap of oily french fries topped
with slices of either chicken fillet or steak, cooked on the
truck’s grill and slathered with generous helpings of homemade
chimichurri sauce and mayonnaise. It’s a recipe that Twilla
conjured up a few years back as a variant on the mashed potatoes
and tomatoes, with the mayonnaise and chimichurri sauce that
often accompany a milanega, a breaded chicken or beef cutlet
sandwich sold by street vendors throughout Argentina. 

If empanadas are more your thing, you can choose from beef,
chicken and vegetable ones, three for $11. But if those
traditional pastries are too vanilla, Bozzalla and Twilla, who
travel as far afield as Miami looking for new flavors to
introduce into their cuisine, now offer up a host of specials: a
breakfast empanada, akin to a breakfast burrito, with bacon,
potatoes, cheese and eggs; a pizza empanada with pepperoni
topping; and several dessert creations, including “berries and
cream” and “peach cobbler” empanadas — blasphemy to
traditionalists but popular with Sacramento’s farmers’ market
crowd. 

Bozzalla and Twilla have hopes of convincing Corti Brothers to
stock their chimichurri sauce. One day they may even create a
restaurant that diners can actually sit down in — maybe one that
gives Sacramentans a taste of the vibrant restaurant culture of
Buenos Aires.

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