Small Business Spotlight: Tiny Kitchen
Tiny Kitchen is aptly named. The new Argentine street-food spot on Park Street occupies just 680 square feet, with about 21 seats inside. Somehow, there is still room for a turntable.
The restaurant opened this summer and is very much a family affair. Alejandro Veiga runs it with his wife, Samantha Skarl, and his mother, chef Marta Veiga. The specialty is handmade empanadas, with a menu that changes depending on what’s available.
Start with the traditional beef empanada, based on Veiga’s grandmother’s recipe and made with beef from Jimmy P’s, bell pepper, onion, garlic, paprika and cumin. Other fillings have included spinach and Swiss chard with house-made ricotta and Parmesan, locally grown mushrooms, sweet corn and chipotle chicken. There is an admirable amount of local sourcing happening, too: they’ve used mushrooms from Care to Grow Mushrooms and produce from Mondragón Farms.
Don’t overlook the choripán, either. The Argentine staple is essentially sausage on bread with chimichurri, which is about as much interference as good sausage requires. Salads round out the small, rotating menu.
There’s street art on the walls and a stack of records you’re invited to sort through and choose for the turntable. The soundtrack might depend on whoever walked in five minutes before you.
For all the studied hospitality of the white-tablecloth restaurants around the corner, there’s something refreshing about the lack of ceremony here. You’re close to the people cooking, close to whoever is eating next to you, and invited to have some say in the atmosphere.
That makes those 21 seats important. Pick a record. Make conversation. With three generations behind the empanadas, it’s a good kitchen to find yourself in.
Tiny Kitchen Empanadas
524 Park St., Naples • Mon.–Sat. 11 a.m.–6 p.m. • (239) 571-3364
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Originally published in
The Naples Florida Review.
Read the full edition here.