Fons - Plant Based Empanadas

What a South American experience. South India has similar to empanadas, but usually in form of dessert.
But this is something out of the world. Got 4 empanadas,
Jackfruit Tinga (Bestest), Andean, Smoky mushroom, and sweet potato chilli, with garlic sauce. The flavors so good, had proper heat and spice in each of them. Sad to see it is temporarily closed, but hope they reopen.

Atmosphere: 5

Food: 5

Service: 5

These are basically frozen empanadas that get put through an over once you order. Not fresh and not very tasty either.

I thought the empanadas were kind of dry and hard to eat, the fillings were not so good as well

The food and the services are phenomenal but GOOD GOD someone fix that damn AC I’ve been coming for awhile for lunch but ever since their AC busted i stopped! Tried it again after 2 weeks and WHY IS IT STILL NOT FIXED?!

Atmosphere: 1

Food: 5

Service: 5

it’s located in a shared corner shop, so look out for the name so you don’t pass by it. We weren’t that impressed with the food as it wasn’t that tasty or special. Customer service was ok even though we came at 8pm they were already done for the day (you could see it on their faces) We took 2x2 empanadas with smoky mushroom and margharita plus a regular lemonade. Seating was short and wasn’t cleaned for a long time , you could tell. Lemonade was too sugary and blunt and honestly the worst we had ever drunk. Seems to be popular in down town because people were coming in but they have to do better for that location and pricing. Updated from previous review on 2024-07-21

i've been checking out their menu and seeing these cute empanadas everywhere for months so when i was downtown i thought it would be a good idea to stop by. the workers were very friendly and helped recommend flavors to choose! the store is small, but there are a few seats along the wall. i think it's ideal to take out, but i ended up eating at one of the seats along the side since i was hungry. i ordered one tinga, one sweet potato chili, one andean, and one smoky mushroom empanada. first of all, i loved the colors! the sweet potato chili had activated charcoal and i thought it was very interesting to see the colorful doughs. it was nice to know they were made with veggies too. they were EXTREMELY hot when they were fresh, so definitely something to look out for - i was too hungry and totally burned my mouth, although it was worth it! i think the sweet potato chili was my favorite. it had a nice kick to it that i really enjoyed. definitely get the garlic sauce too.. it's amazing and cools down the hot empanadas. i do think that they gave me a margherita empanada instead of the andean, but that one was good too. i was a little disappointed because i had been excited to try it. not a big deal though! overall i enjoyed the empanadas here and i was happy i finally tried them. definitely a worthwhile stop if you're downtown and looking for something good to eat!

Great find, very tasty and you can see a lot of love has gone into making them.

As with most restaurants in this part of Chicago, there is not much space to sit and it's on the more expensive side. However, it's worth the money. The empanadas are more filling than they look, and they are all vegan. Most of the drink options are vegan or easily veganized (I enjoy the green smoothie with no honey). I ate here many times at the small bar area and never had any trouble. My favorite flavors were the Andean, Tinga, Ropa Vieja, and Smoky Mushroom. The Margherita is like a pizza pocket and is good with the garlic dip. There are sweet empanada options as well. This location is conveniently located right by the rail line.

They were OK. I was only able to eat one of the two recommended to me by the staff, which was the tomato mozzarella empanada, which essentially tasted like an OK cheese pizza. The second one was the chorizo potato and it was actually horrible. I couldn’t eat it, who is frustrating when these are nearly $5 each.

Great food you can walk around with. Note that if they offer you garlic sauce it's an up sell. it's good but not free.

Expected more... I thought "meh". Tried 4 empanadas and only 1 was interesting. Ordered a latte too, which was really watery and tasteless. I want to be supportive of a plant based business, but overall quite bland and mediocre service, the employees were quite inexperienced. Updated from previous review on 2024-04-09

Very tasty food, it’s a little pricy and has almost no space to eat. But the food was very good.

We tried four different empanadas, pulled bbq, margarita, chorizo & chocolate banana. All of them were flavorful and tasty! Dough was also perfect.

I watched this man drop an empanada and pick it up with tongs. He then used the tongs to serve other empanadas!! YUCK

I first had Fons at Vegandale in Chicago a few years back, and now it's one of my must stops when I'm in Chicago. They also have Fons in NYC now, too! Fons has the most incredible empanadas. Everything is vegan and made from natural whole foods. They use no artificial dyes or colors to achieve their beautiful empanada dough. They have so many different flavors to choose from, and it's so fun to try them all. They have mostly savory empanadas, but they also have dessert ones as well. My favorite is the Tinga and Asian Lumpa. They also have a delicious BBQ empanada as well. The price is pretty fair and the empanadas are large in size.