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Bread, business, and each other
Sandra Garcia came to Canada by way of Venezuela and Chile. In Chile, she worked as an immigration consultant, someone who helps others navigate exactly the kind of systems she would later have to navigate herself. When she arrived in Halifax, she was cleaning houses, learning English, and watching carefully how things worked until she understood them well enough to move.
She is now full-time in the business. What makes her effective is the same thing that made her an immigration consultant: she asks the right questions of the right people, finds the programs and institutions that matter, and explains complicated things to others in plain language. The five-month course in Toronto, the SPICE program, the regulations she learned and now helps other Latin business owners understand: all of it came from a disposition toward figuring things out rather than assuming.
Hector works a 2pm to 10pm shift and spends his mornings in the kitchen. He has always been good at bread and corn. He loves to bake. The empanada shells and the arepas are his, shaped by someone who makes them because he wants to, not because someone asked him to.
Together they are complementary in a way that is not accidental. He bakes. She figures it out. Both of them show up on Saturday morning and set up the table and stand there until the market closes. Sandra's word for all of it is perseverance. She also says homesick. And family. Those three words together are the business.
Corn, family, and the long way around
The two things people come back to the table for
Venezuelan empanadas are made from corn, not wheat. That single difference changes the texture, the flavor, and who can eat them. A corn empanada is naturally gluten-friendly in a way that most empanadas in Halifax are not.
Hector makes the shell. Sandra makes the filling. The beef is seasoned the way it is done in Venezuela, without adjustment for a general audience. People who grew up eating empanadas recognize it before they finish their first bite. People who haven't grown up eating them recognize that something is different, even if they can't name what.
It is the product that people ask for specifically when they come back. That is the simplest measure of a bestseller.
People see this one before they taste it. The filling is chicken, creamy avocado, cilantro, and lemon, and when the arepa opens, the green against the white of the corn is genuinely beautiful. At a market table, it stops people mid-step.
The arepa itself is corn flour — soft, warm, substantial enough to be a meal. The pepiyada filling hits in layers: chicken first, then the avocado, then the brightness of the lemon and cilantro finishing everything. Sandra calls it an explosion of flavor. That is accurate.
People who have never eaten an arepa tend to be skeptical about corn bread as a concept. They say nothing critical after trying it. That is usually how it goes.
A Heartfelt Note
Naguara is what Venezuelans say when something surprises them. When a moment is better than expected. When the right thing happens and you don't quite have another word for it. We named this business after that feeling because it is the one we want people to have when they try our food.
Everything we make is gluten-friendly. That is not a marketing decision. Venezuelan empanadas are made from corn, the way they have always been made, and corn does not contain gluten. We discovered at the markets that this matters to people who had stopped expecting to find empanadas they could eat. Watching someone try one and realize they can have it is a particular kind of moment. We are glad to be the ones who provide it.
When you buy from us, you are supporting a small business trying to grow in a new country from the beginning. If we grow, we can give work to other people. We can add something real to what makes Halifax a city worth visiting and worth living in. We are grateful to everyone who tries something unfamiliar and comes back for it.
Come find us at Brewery Market. Try the beef empanada. Try the arepa pepiyada. And if your reaction is naguara — that is exactly what we were going for.
~ Sandra and Hector
