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Posts from the ‘Argentina’ Category

Bar de Gallego

No, this isn’t chicken fried steak. It’s not a schnitzel either, though it could be. This blobby, pounded, battered and pan-fried beef cutlet is a milanesa, and they’re quite popular casual fare in Argentina (and other parts of Latin America too—it’s a common filling for Mexican tortas).

Bar de gallego milanesa

I had to try one, and old-school Bar de Gallego, holding-out on a corner in gentrifying (fied?) Palermo Hollywood, seemed like the right place to try one during Saturday lunch, mere minutes after we arrived in town. I saw quite a few milanesas coming out of the kitchen, some decked out with melted cheese and tomato sauce, napolitana-style with giant mounds of mashed potatoes on the side. I had to draw the line and stick with the lemon juice-only purism. French fries are part of the combo. French fries are always part of the combo.

This was my first meal in Buenos Aires and I noticed a lot of things. One, women were eating seriously hearty food, leaving no leftovers and they were all quite svelte. Argentines challenged my notion that only Asian girls can eat whatever they want. In fact, I’m more convinced than ever that pretty much everyone else except me can eat whatever they please to no ill effect. Two, no one eats ketchup with their fries. I’m ok with this, but I don’t recall ever seeing a bottle anywhere and papas fritas are on like every menu in town, high and low. Three, Argentine food is essentially meat and potatoes to the point where the blandest American palate wouldn’t be offended.

Which isn’t to say that the cuisine is flavorless, they just don’t like spicy food. Neither do Spaniards, Swedes and plenty of residents on the planet. (As an aside, I’m not sure where the notion that all Latinos eat hot food comes from. Mexican food certainly is picante, and other nationalities use chiles, especially in condiments, but I wouldn’t characterize most of these cuisines as fiery. And I don’t know that all Argentines even consider themselves Latino, which is a whole other aside.)

So, my thin crisp slab of meat and surprisingly crunchy, non-mealy steak fries (normally, I don't like fat fries) were satisfying, and perfect as is, I was just speculating that if I were eating them at home I know I would break out the Sriracha. Maybe I’m afraid of naked food.

Bar de gallego costillas

To me, costillas are ribs, but here they turned out to be deliciously meaty, properly fatty ‘50s-style pork chops. None of that lean other white meat business. And for approximately $5 we weren’t expecting two slabs. Also with fries, of course. I only had one (ok, two) bites because this was James’s dish.

I’d much rather be downing a breaded cutlet and bottle of Quilmes than the peanut butter toast and iced black coffee I’m looking at this Saturday afternoon.

Bar de gallego exterior

Bar de Gallego * Bonpland 1703, Buenos Aires, Argentina

La Cabrera

1/2 La Cabrera is the perfect starting point for Buenos Aires restaurant rehashing (which I’m trying to keep short and sweet) as it’s where we wildly indulged in steak on the day we arrived and the day we left the city. Of the four parrillas we tried, this was easily our favorite.

It’s definitely baffling because they kind of embody much that I hate: long waits, stifling crowds and rickety tables cramped closer together than the worst Manhattan perpetrator. And normally, being passed over when all the other customers waiting outside for seats were being handed free glasses of champagne would’ve been the last straw. But yes, the fact that we returned six days after our first visit is a testament to their allure.

It did have the advantage of being a ten-minute walk from our apartment, just across the railroad tracks, but that was just a happenstance bonus.

The steakhouse is not traditional in that it’s a touch more stylish them some (though not slick). The décor is typically woody and rustic, but the music is more ambient techno than acoustic guitar folksy, and instead of standard papas fritas on the side, you’re plied with baker’s dozen of ramekins containing pickled and creamed vegetables and starches, banchan-style. The portions are enormous, completely high quality and were priced well below our expectations ($61 for meat, sides, dessert, bottle of Malbec and glass of champagne, all for two). It set the standard for the rest of the week where meat wasn’t always so monstrously sized, wine glasses weren’t filled so tall and desserts not as decadent. We practically peaked on night one.

La cabrera bread  

Bread basket and pimento cheese spread. Southern hemisphere meets the American south.

La cabrera steaks

We couldn’t gauge portion sizes based on price because everything seemed reasonable by NYC standards. We initially ordered a bife de chorizo (sirloin) and an ojo de bife (rib eye) and thankfully were told that that was insane (I think my Spanish classes are finally starting to pay off—while I still can barely speak coherently, I understood way more on this trip compared to Mexico City last May, and had little trouble communicating). Instead, it was suggested that we order media portions of each, which still ended up being gargantuan at half-size. Being big leftover advocates (which is kind of frowned on here, but I just can’t waste food), we were excited to learn that para llevar is completely normal in Buenos Aires and we were offered doggie bags throughout the week for things that even I wouldn’t normally bother wrapping up.

The sides on the plank include white beans two ways, one with parsley the other with tomatoes, an eggplant caponata, endive with creamy dressing, baby potatoes in another creamy sauce and the only accompaniment that scared me: cold rice tossed with what I suspect was mayonnaise.

La cabrera bife de chorizo & ojo de bife

As you can see the ojo de bife on the right is a little pinker because I asked for it “jugoso.” I’d heard horror stories about overcooked meat, but that never turned out to be a problem even when doneness wasn’t specified.

La cabrera sides

Clockwise from the top: whipped sweet potato, mashed potatoes, black olives in a tomato sauce, creamed mushrooms, roasted garlic, raisin applesauce and onions pickled in red wine vinegar in the center.

Here’s what I hate to admit: I swear I can’t tell the difference between grass-fed beef and our corn-fed style. I don’t doubt that I could detect nuances in a side-by-side taste test but I only eat steak in the US maybe two or three times a year so the flavor wasn’t easily conjurable.

I’ve never been beef-crazed, but while in Buenos Aires I found myself wanting more and more meat, seriously, even while chewing I was already planning ahead to where we could try more the next day. When I thought for sure I would burn out after two meals and the opposite occurred, I realized something unusual was going on.

Most beef here is just boring, that’s the problem. This meat had some chewiness, the flavor strong and pure. Much of the wow came from the contrast between outer char and inner tenderness. I do think they trim their meat less, leaving desirable (to me) pockets of fat.

La cabrera panqueque con dulce de leche & helado

I love dulce de leche filled crepes, a.k.a. panqueque. This was a fancy rendition with fresh cream, peach slices and ice cream that tasted like nutmeg and cinnamon. For someone who’s not supposed to be eating sugar, this is the type of tooth-achey concoction I’ll make an exception for because I like my desserts super-sweet and gooey, all or nothing.

We did receive a complimentary glass of champagne after dessert, which nearly made up for being alcohol-slighted during our 45-minute stint outside. Yes, even while trying to relax on vacation I hold grudges.

* * *

La cabrera morcilla

Luckily, we were able to squeeze in a lunch before having to head to the airport and I finally got my morcilla. The dark innards inside the casing were very moist and soft and slightly sweet. If they weren’t called blood sausages, I don’t think Americans would be so scared of them. Ok, I guess the blobs look scary, too. They cracked out chimichurri (which doesn’t come with most steaks in Buenos Aires, contrary to the condiment’s ubiquitousness in US Argentine restaurants) as well as an oniony tomato puree.

La cabrera media ojo de bife

We ordered half an ojo de bife. Interestingly, the sides weren’t exactly the same this time and included hummus which was a tasty oddity. And yes, we took the steak remnants to go, packed them in a suitcase and ate them for dinner back in Brooklyn. Quite possibly the best souvenir ever.

La Cabrera * Cabrera 5009, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Beefed Up

Painful. Returning from a not-long-enough vacation is always painful but transitioning from pleasant fall weather to heat wave spring isn’t making me any happier about being back in NYC. (98 degrees or not, no one’s allowed to call the three weeks from Memorial Day to June 21 summer. You have to be a stickler or else society will simply fall apart, you know? Last night I went nuts because friends referred to Jane’s Addiction as ‘90s when their big hits were so undeniably late ‘80s. Early June is not summer and 1988 is not 1990.)

Buenos Aires was fun, and as is typical on vacation I did little else than eat, walk a lot and generally hang out. I have a woeful amount of non-food photos to show for my travels, as you’ll see below.

This is BA in a non-comprehensive nutshell:

Buenos aires starbucks line four days out

My Starbucks fantasy was not to be. We were shocked to arrive at Alto Palermo mall to face a line at least forty people deep, four days after opening. We unpurposely ended up at this block the next day after tracking down a theater to see subtitled Indiana Jones, which turned out to be an alien movie (and bizarrely, the day after that when a saunter from the zoo put us out nearby again) and the mob scene was the same. New Yorkers would be pitching an antsy fit, but Porteños took this as an opportunity for making out. I witnessed a lot of overzealous making out in the past week.

They eat late, which is perfect for my inner clock. If you eat dinner at 10pm, which is normal, you can eat a large lunch at 2pm and have time to digest it, plus you can sleep until 11:30am like I normally do on weekends and not feel guilty because you can still manage to squeeze a lot into your shifted schedule.

Crazy good value. Europeans in NYC are annoying because of their spending power. Yet it didn’t feel so bad dividing the cost of everything in Buenos Aires by three. A 36 peso steak is only $12. Hotels are also completely reasonable, but we went the apartment rental route because it was kind of fun to have a kitchen and small terrace with a grill even it was a bit too cold to cook outdoors. We actually had to turn the heat on, which is hard to imagine now as we're scrambling to install air conditioners. A week cost me my income tax rebate check, not too horrible, and I definitely could’ve stayed elsewhere for cheaper but I didn't want to.

Like Mexico City (the only other firsthand source of comparison I have for Latin America), Buenos Aires is a dog city. They love them (and seem to be unfond of cats—when we told our building manager that we played with the stray cats at the cemetery in Recoleta he made a face and said, “oh, I don’t like cats.”), they make them wear sweaters and t-shirts and apparently, there are no such things as leash laws and forced scooping. Yes, BA is the shittiest city I’ve ever encountered. My block of Carroll Gardens is one of the shittiest in the neighborhood but it could never compete with BA. There are probably ten piles of poop per block, it’s an obstacle course, and I was probably unwise to bring along a brand new pair of shoes which are now encrusted in mud and feces.

Which brings me to another fascination (and another New York Times link from this week’s paper): sidewalks. You can always judge a city by its sidewalks, and it’s one of the only nice things about America that I take for granted. I forget that elsewhere wide, smooth concrete, well-maintained sidewalks are a given. If I’m correct, it’s because we’re a fairly new country and the city creates them while in older countries each property was responsible for creating its own sidewalk so they differ from house to house or business; some brick, others tiny tiles, some cracked like tectonic plates and filled with mud puddles. I never wore the pair of heels I brought with me because they were too dangerous for maneuvering crevasses, bulging tree roots and crumbling stone stairs. Bangkok was pure chaos and that was reflected in their unwalkable sidewalks and dangerous uncrossable streets. BA wasn’t that bad. They drive like maniacs and have zero regard for pedestrians in BA but they do stop at stoplights (not at stop signs) and there are crosswalks at some intersections. A toddler was runover and killed by a taxi while (not in front of us—this was on the news) were in town and this wasn’t surprising in the least.

Weird blonde hair. I tried to take photos but don’t like surreptitiously snapping pics of strangers. The entire country has bad dye jobs. I’m guessing that a majority of the women have my hair color, dark brown, but persist in being blonde which creates this strange washed out quality. Some go for honey blonde, which sometimes works; others try for platinum and end up with orange streaks and black roots. And yes, Argentines are an abnormally attractive lot (though the 1 in 30 plastic surgery statistic might explain that) but the ladies should stop messing with their hair. Also, the latino mullet is alive and well in Buenos Aires.

Strange preference for 7up. Do we even have 7up anymore? Pepsi was also present but everyone who wasn’t drinking seltzer/agua con gas (I love a country that’s gung ho on club soda as it’s my favorite non-alcoholic beverage) seemed to order 7up. And there were ads everywhere.

Purple clothes. I seem to recall purple being big in fashion a few years ago here. But there’s a clear mania for it in BA this very second. Every clothing, shoe and housewares store seemed to be showcasing items in purple. Why?

You can’t escape the white trash S, even in the southern hemisphere. After hearing a gaggle of college-aged American girls walking behind us say, “we’re totally going to Olsens for brunch Sunday,” I totally lost interest in going to Olsen for brunch, despite staying only two blocks away. All tourists go to Olsen for Sunday brunch. We got Basque tapas instead and there were no Uggs in sight.

Beef is prevalent, enormous in portion and insanely cheap, duh. Beef is the meat I rarely eat in my day to day existence—I’m more into pork and poultry—but I’ll confess to getting hooked on steak. Just like not being burnt out on Chinese food after returning from China, I could totally eat a steak and blood sausage after seven days of the stuff. I’ll have to document these carnivorous exploits in individual restaurant-focused posts because there’s too much to describe in this quick run down.

MILF translates as MQQT (mamá que quisiera tirarme) in Spanish. You learn important things like this if you watch American Pie while on vacation. And despite Argentina appearing to have most of our major TV shows, they were also airing Van Helsing, which is bizarre because that was also on TV last May when were in Mexico City.

Ok, photos. Rather than continuing to ramble aimlessly, I have pictures (some with explanatory captions when "notes" appears on the bottom left) to look at instead. It’s just easier this way.