Pizza y Pan Pa' Ya

This goes under the heading of "I don't know much about this cuisine but I think there's good food going on here".

Pizza y Pan Pa' Ya is a Columbian bakery on Montrose in Albany Park. They feature baked goods and small empanadas throughout the day. There are breakfast/egg dishes, and some interesting looking sausages. They make a really tasty pizza, too, although I think that's only available after 4. It appears that most of the baked goods are constructed to taste best next to a cup of coffee.

The empanadas are a smallish size [2 1/2-3 inches across] with a fairly delicate dough. They are fried to order and served with a hot green salsa.

The pizzas are very tasty. The crust has something different going on, and I haven't figured out what yet. I'm suspecting there's something other than just wheat flour in the dough of the thin crust [haven't tried the thick crust yet]. I've had only a couple of pizzas here - the chicken and mushroom, sausage and mushroom, and the fruit pizza.
The sausage they use is very Chicago appropriate - pepper and fennel notes are detectable. The pie can be soggy in the middle; it might benefit from a request for light sauce. The fruit pizza was weird, covered in dried fruit & cherries [a product of me not ordering what I thought I ordered], but when I left it out at work in the break room, it evaporated pretty quickly.

Sometimes I have had language issues here; my sad handful of Spanish food words hasn't been enough to help. I did learn that Mexican Spanish calls mushrooms 'hongos' while Columbian Spanish calls them 'champinones' almost like the French.

I'm not doing justice to the place, really, but I wanted to put it on the map.

You can see the menu and pictures on their Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/pizzaypanpaya/

Pizza y Pan Pa' Ya
3125 W Montrose Ave
Chicago, Illinois 60618

(773) 463-2619

Giovanna

I've seen this place. Hell, I live only a mile-and-a-half from it. But I've never been. And while I'll fault you for not posting pictures (ok, not really), your description (enticing) had me running over to Yelp to look for pictures. Now, I need to visit - sounds terrific. Thanks for posting about it!

Reminds me I should visit again! I visited this at an Albany Park Dines dessert crawl last year. https://www.facebook.com/albanyparkdines/

Here was my assessment from August 2017:

The last place we went to was Pizza Y Pan Pa’ya, a Colombian bakery and pizzeria where La Brasa Roja used to be (they moved across the street). I noticed they had both bunuelo and pan de bono (which I recall at another bakery the names seem interchangeable as they sold only one item; also, Costco sells a frozen product you can bake at home, I think the Costco version also uses tapioca). I got one of each to see what the difference was. Here, the bunuelo is the typical ball shaped savory cheese bread and I think it is deep fried, but not exactly sure how it is made. The pan de bono is round but flat and has a slightly sweeter taste. I think both are corn based rather than wheat based. The friendly counter guy (who seems to get good comments on Yelp) said there was another similar bread but they were sold out. I also got the arepa, a flat corn pattie that is often served hot with cheese, I skipped the cheese since I was taking it home. There seemed to be too much corn dough in this version compared to others I’ve gotten elsewhere (which has more corn kernels and less dough). I forget exactly how much these three items were, maybe about $6. The APD members in attendance shared a pepperoni pizza and a fruit pizza (several fruits with a strawberry sauce topped with cheese; I read their pineapple ham pizza also has a pineapple sauce rather than tomato). Their pizza dough to me looked like it was made with corn meal and also had the crispy texture of it too, although the counter guy said it was a regular dough.

Since I already had other dessert treats earlier that day, I just had a drink, sugar cane tea, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aguapanela. It came with a slice of mozzarella which the counter guy said is how they drink it there, you lay the cheese over the top of the mug and let it melt and stir it in. It was interesting, it did cut the sweetness of the tea a bit (which I don’t think had any actual tea, just hot sugar cane juice and water) but for me chewing on gobs of melted cheese did not match with having it in a sweet drink. Maybe it was a poor man’s teatime meal. $2.50 for the drink. The two large/14” pizzas and sodas was about $30 (with tax). I guess Colombian foods are all about corn and cheese! Reviewers seem to like their pizza.

BR wrote:I've seen this place. Hell, I live only a mile-and-a-half from it. But I've never been. And while I'll fault you for not posting pictures (ok, not really), your description (enticing) had me running over to Yelp to look for pictures. Now, I need to visit - sounds terrific. Thanks for posting about it!

Co-signed. I live less than a mile from here, but have yet to try. Will give it a go within the week or so and report back!

The bunuelos here are terrific -- cheesy and salty, crispy and pillowy -- and completely gluten-free; I ordered a tray of "mini-bunuelos" (which are more like 3/4-sized) this January to take to a party where the host was GF. They were a straight-up hit.

The bunuelos just up Lincoln at Mekato's http://lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?p=217845 are similarly delicious, but I could not confirm their lack of gluten even after a phone call to that bakery.

I'll note that the folks who work at PYPPY are also terrific; I found them very helpful and friendly.

Quite the coincidence this thread should pop up when it did. We visited just this past Saturday as part of a fact finding mission. My daughter, abe_froeman, is organizing a Roadfood.com crawl, centered around the Honey Butter Fried Chicken neighborhood. Already solidly on the list are Bang Bang Pie Shop, Red Hot Ranch on Western, and of course, HBFC as a grand finale. Also up for consideration were El Potosi Taqueria on Elston, Great Seas on Montrose, and by recommendation of a friend, Pizza y Pan Pa' Ya.

I was already an occasional customer at El Potosi, and knew Great Seas by it's GNR designation. Pizza y Pan Pa' Ya was the most intriguing, having earned high praise from LTHer Da Beef.

This was definitely the highlight of the day. We chowed down on wonderful Colombian pastries on par with Mekato's, excellent Empanadas with a hefty, crunchy shell, loads of appetizers/finger food, and their namesake pizza. We got the thin crust Chicken and Mushroom (they also serve a pan version) and were delighted with our pie. I wouldn't describe the crust as crispy so much as crunchy, implying more depth. It was almost like biting into a multi-layered croissant. The toppings were solid and generous. My only complaint is it could have used a bit more tomato sauce, but that's based on personal taste. The other tasters were quite happy with the pie as served.

Pizza y Pan Pa' Ya is now a definite part of the crawl list, along with El Potosi. I'm sad to say Great Seas was a bit ordinary on this particular day and didn't impress any of the folks in our group.

Buddy

El Potosi Taqueria
3710 N Elston Ave.
Chicago, IL 60618
(773) 463-2517

Pizza y Pan Pa' Ya
3125 W Montrose
Chicago, IL 60618
(773) 463-2619