’Tis the season for tamales at Tacoma’s favorite Colombian restaurant

To not have tamales around the holidays, said the family behind Sabor Colombiano Luis Panes, would be sacrilege.

In the off-season, this Colombian restaurant at 5640 South Tacoma Way — known since 2012, then at a stall at the B&I Marketplace in Lakewood, for its empanadas — prepares maybe 50 tamales, the masa ground in-house and hand-pressed around chicken, pork, peas, potatoes and carrots. In November and December, that number doubles and sometimes triples as families stock their celebrations with this essential holiday dish.

Leading up to and most especially on Christmas Eve, said Sebastian Betancourt, son of owners Luis and Gladys Betancourt, “They just gotta be in there.”

Tamal season really takes off during the nine days of novenas, a Catholic ritual of prayer leading to a feast day. In Colombia, explained the younger Betancourt, families and friends gather daily, roving from house to house to sing carols, drink perhaps too much aguardiente and, of course, eat. Spreads typically include buñuelos (perfectly round cheese croquettes), natilla (a flan-like coconut custard) and steamed tamales wrapped in banana leaves.

One would surmise it’s the make-ahead reality that helped plunge tamales into party favor all over Latin America, but the Betancourts don’t know for sure. It is, as they say, simply tradition.

“If we don’t have them, we look pretty bad,” joked Sebastian Betancourt. “People that live here haven’t gone to Colombia in many years, and so eating a tamal for them — it brings them back.”

He recalls his family back home coalescing in one kitchen to make these very tamales. “It’s only that recipe,” he said on a Friday in December. His grandmother, now in her 90s, showed his father how to make them on her last visit.

At their South Tacoma restaurant, decorated with images of Medellín, Bogotá and Cartagena, the patriarch and his small staff arrive by 8 a.m. to begin the process of making hundreds of empanadas. Their commitment to tradition goes above and beyond: They purchase whole corn kernels and mill them in-house into a fine flour for both these crescents and the tamales.

After years of handheld pressing, they invested in an empanada machine that flattens and pinches, but it still requires quite a bit of handiwork — pulling each wad of masa from the mixing bowl and filling each shell with spinach and cheese, pork and pineapple, beef and potatoes.

On Fridays only, they also make tamales, and that process is 100 percent by hand.

In the United States, most of us know Mexican tamales, long and skinny, enrobed by corn husks. Colombian tamales, and many of their counterparts across Latin America, are more square, packed not with a singular meat but a trio plus veggies and sometimes rice, the style of Tolima outside Bogotá, sealed in dark-green banana leaves.

The Betancourts are Paisa, the people of the northwest region of Antioquia that includes Medellín. Their recipe packs an entire chicken drumstick, chicharrón and pork shoulder, marinated overnight in a sauce of red bell pepper, scallions, Spanish onions and garlic. That juice is also drizzled over the soft masa, to which Luis and Co. add one special ingredient: bacon fat.

“It gives it a really cool flavor,” explained Sebastian Betancourt.

The wrapped tamales rest for 24 hours before, on Saturday, they spend three hours steaming.

“It’s very slow,” added Betancourt, “but it’s the only way.”

If settling into a booth or a stool along the lunch counter in the restaurant, the kitchen unwraps the tamal for you, adding a scoop of hogao, a traditional Colombian sofrito of jolly acidity. The potatoes are soft, the chicken moist, the flavor as comforting as a spontaneous sing-along on Christmas Eve, the fire begging for one more log.

SABOR COLOMBIANO LUIS EMPANADAS

▪ 5640 South Tacoma Way, Tacoma, 253-212-0613, empanadasluispanes.com

▪ Monday-Saturday 11 a.m.-6 p.m. (closed Sundays)

▪ Details: full menu of traditional Colombian plates; Saturdays best for fresh tamales, but also generally available on weekdays — call ahead for large orders

This story was originally published December 21, 2022 at 5:00 AM.