Recs for Argentina: Mendoza & Buenos Aires?

I'm headed to Argentina in a couple of weeks and would love any recommendations for upscale and down home dining in the cities of Mendoza and Buenos Aires.

Even better would be any advice on markets or food shopping in the greater Mendoza wine region - particularly near Vistalba.

Any help appreciated!

The greatest steak restaurant I have ever visited is Cabaña Las Lilas, Alicia Moreau de Justo 516 (tel. 11/4313-1336) in Buenos Aries. The steak is wonderful, the ambiance terrific (if you don't mind a crowded and busy place) and the price is very fair (cheap by US standards).

Another great place is Restaurant Agraz in the Caesar Park Buenos Aires, Posadas 1232, C1011ABF Buenos Aires, (Telephone: 54 11 4819-1100. Even though we ordinarilly do not frequent hotel restaurants, this one is steller. While the menu is a bit limited the food and service are first rate!

I would NOT reccomend La Bourgogne, Av. Alvear 1891 (tel. 11/4805-3857), in the Alvear Palace. We found the food just OK, the service poor and price humongous (the most expensive meal we had in BA and the worst).

See this thread for some additional BA suggestions.

I was in both Mendoza and Buenos Aires in March and will try my best to remember the highlights!

In Mendoza you should live the high-life with pre-dinner cocktails and snacks at the Park Hyatt. The cocktails are expensive for Mendoza ($4-5) but excellent and the hotel is beautiful.

There is a Central Market right in the center of town that has a number of stands selling meat, cheese, “health food” (primarily seemed to be bulk breakfast cereal!) and other groceries. In addition, there are a number of snack stalls for pizza, empanadas, etc.

We heard great things about Ruca Malen winery for lunch, but we didn’t get to try it as we called too late to book. So I’d book a few weeks in advance if you are interested.

In BsAs, we loved La Cabrera in Palermo, even though full of other American tourists like us. Seriously delicious steak and it is fun to try the 15 or so mini-sides that they bring you. I would definitely recommend booking in advance as it’s quite busy.

Also in Palermo, if you have a sweet tooth, you should hit Mark’s Deli for the cheesecake which involves a layer of chocolate between the crust and cheesecake and blueberries. It’s an odd mix, but delicious and extremely rich.

We also really liked Palio pizza, which is huge but was still completely packed on a Saturday at about midnight. Good thin-crust personal pizzas for when you need a break from steak.

One of the best things I ate on the trip was the cheeseburger with grilled onions at the Boca Juniors game. If you are at all interested, you should look into the tour groups that do tickets and transport to the games – we had a great time and could not get over the fans and how crazy they went for the whole game.

FWIW – we loved both places we stayed, B&B Plaza Italia in Mendoza and Hotel La Cayetana in BsAs.

In Mendoza, 1884 is considered the top restaurant. I ate there a few years ago and loved it. I would consider the cooking to be Argentinian fusion. See if you can get a tour of the Catena winery. It's spectacular.

Stayed mostly in Palermo but for steak places I also reccommend, La Cabrera, we ate at the El Norte location, La Brigada in San Telmo, and by far the best steak was at Estilio Criollo, in Palermo, I would consider this my "GNR" of the trip. It was fantastic. This place had the best provoletta, empanadas, steak and ravioli, charcuterie (complimentary) the enitre trip. They also were the only parilla that cooked the steak perfectly. Also, in Palermo, maybe one of the best restaurants and dining experiences I have ever had in my life was Cluny.
Another place we really enjoyed but couldn't get an evening reservation was Sarkis. Had a wonderful lunch. Fantastic Armenian food, and they do have one English menu, but keep both, if you want to order skewers of lamb, chicken of beef.

We stayed at the Bo Bo boutique hotel, and they also had a very good menu, and we had a nice dinner there.

La Cabrera
Cabrera 5127, Palermo

La Brigada (San Telmo)
Estados Unidos 465

Cluny
El Salvador 4018 , Palermo

Estilio Criollo
Serrano 1458, Palermo

Sarkis
Thames 1101, Palermo

Bo Bo Hotel http://www.bobohotel.com/
Guatemala 4882, Palermo

Matt wrote:See this thread for some additional BA suggestions.

Matt, those are some obscure recs for Buenos Aires.

The other (likely intended) Buenos Aires thread, which probably ought to merge in here, is here.

Any updates or additional thoughts on Mendoza and/or Buenos Aires ? I'll be in BA for just a couple of days and a few more in Mendoza for Vendimia (wine harvest festival).

Thanks !

Nab

tatterdemalion wrote:

Matt wrote:See this thread for some additional BA suggestions.

Matt, those are some obscure recs for Buenos Aires.

Busch Gardens, Buenos Aires -- both have two words, start with B and are practically anagrams of one another if you squint. I blame the migration to the new version of the software.

I hands down second La Cabrera in the Palermo Soho neighborhood. We had the best steaks there (the pepper lomo) with incredible side dishes. You MUST check it out!

Also, for a more fun experience, check out Siga La Vaca near Puerto Madeiro...it's essentially an all you can eat meat buffet.

The most memorable meal I had in BA was at an Italian restaurant called Guido's Bar, located across the street from the zoo in Palermo. (I believe the owner, Guido, also owns a pizza place called Lucky Luciano). Guido said his father came from Southern Italy, (maybe Sicily?) and opened the restaurant in BA. The front area is a bar with a few tables, and there is a back room with a few larger tables. They had no menu; they just start bringing dishes out. Appetizers included some kind of corn bread fritters, cucumbers in a creamy beet-red sauce, thin and crispy pizza, some seasoned crostini, fried raviolis, a few other cold marinated veggies. They brought out buttered noodles for my little nephews. Then 3 different pastas; a shell pasta with truffle oil and mushrooms, a rotini with curry and nuts, (the owner, Guido, said there is a Northern African influence on South Italy, though their dish was by no means traditional), and some other pasta in a tomato sauce. All perfectly al dente. Then he brought out a big plate with ice cream, chocolate cake, some cookies, and I can't remember what else. Perhaps not a 5-star fine dining establishment, but a different, extremely enjoyable and memorable experience, I'd call it a GNR for BA.

Guido's Bar
República de la India 2843
Buenos Aires, C1425FCC


BTW, my parilla experience was so-so. I felt that a home cooked steak bought at a BA grocery store was much better, though the dining experience at the parilla restaurant was excellent, and by US standards, very cheap, maybe $10-15 for steak and a glass of wine.

Giving this a bump. Headed to Argentina in a month, and would love to get a recent perspective.

One place I've read good things about in Buenos Aires is La Vineria de Gualterio Bolivar. Has anyone been? Any additional wineries not to miss in Mendoza?

http://www.lavineriadegualteriobolivar.com
http://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_R ... trict.html

Was in BA & Mendoza last year.

Did a tour of about 8 wineries:

Weinert - Pretty generic, old school winery

Antoinetti - A small, family run winery east of the valley. An italian family. The wife cooked for us and made us the best empanadas i ever had. Off the beaten path, but a huge difference from the rest of the wineries.

Salentein - They do it well, but it has that feeling of mass production.

Altus (not Altos) - a small winery where we had a 20 course lunch and our own personal chef - perhaps the most amazing experience of the trip.

Lagarde - Our tour guide was absolutely gorgeous which made up for a run-of-the-mill winery

Landelia - A new vineyard (maybe 5 years old), but hands down the most gorgeous and the best scenery of them all.


I recommend doing a bunch - we got a mix. While Weinet & Salentein were a bit bland, they probably had the best "tour" - Altus & Landelia however had the best overall experience.

Thanks for the info. We're going to Uco Valley one day, and Lujan de Cuyo the other. Got a driver so we don't have to worry about how much wine we drink.

One last bump. We leave in a little more than a week!

When you’re only in town for two days, having done zero due diligence, it’s still pretty hard to go wrong in Buenos Aires, where the local Golden Corral is in the same league as David Burke’s Primehouse.

Unfortunately, between me and my co-pilot, we had ourselves a little South American yard sale and left behind a few memory cards (among many other things ), so very few photos remain.

Stretching out under an 80-degree sun on a sidestreet in the heart of bustling BA, after a redeye flight, catching up with an old friend, with a cold lager in hand, the tingle of anticipation, and a salty sandwich is not a memory I’m soon to forget. That was the first of many. Sunny days. Cafes. Cold beers. Salty sandwiches. The first one was a charm though – thick-cut, very young salami that was not short on savor or tang, on the perfect little baguette.

The hotel’s breakfast was a nice spread of pastries, breads, cured meats, cheese, fruits, fresh juices etc, but even if you slept through it, there was always an excellent cup of coffee and an empanada around the corner, at every corner. The empanadas varied greatly from one place to the next – you can easily spot the great ones, but picking winners out of the vast middle-pack is a tough game, though frequently rewarding. Ironically, the only surviving photo I have is of probably the saddest empanada consumed. I believe this deflated dud contained spinach and cheese:



The above empanada came from a nice little “quicheria” on a side street (or possibly on Bartolome Mitre) somewhere near the Plaza de la Republica (Centro) – with those directions, I don’t expect you to go hunting it down, but if you’re walking around that nabe, you’ll know it when you see it. There will be at least a baker’s dozen delicious quiches in the display case, many of them over-the-top elaborate, along with several different empanadas, salads etc, and a little “mini-mart” across from the food-counter on the opposite side.

On the sweet side, there were a couple of things that you could not have avoided in BA (and Mendoza). Alfajores are dulce de leche cookie sandwiches dipped in chocolate. They are delicious and will ruin your moon pies forever. Havanna is probably the most popular alfajore shop, and they are everywhere. While they do make an excellent alfajore, I found the best ones to come from other ma’n’pa shops about town. The dulce de leche is almost always top-notch, but it always came down to the cookie. Doesn’t it always ?

The other ubiquitous sweet that I indulged in was of course gelato. There’s nothing wrong with a small scoop twice a day. Except that they always give you two scoops, no matter what size you ordered. And I always found myself going for a second gelato after midnight.

When it came to drinking, beer was often the daytime beverage of choice, and in addition to Quilmes & the universal European brews, there are actually some very good micros around at various bars & brewpubs. There were surprisingly few true wine bars around, at least to my eye, but far more in Buenos Aires than Mendoza at least (where wine was consumed by the bottle, not glass). There are many excellent Argentine wines that do not leave the country, and these are very widely available at restaurants and bars and cafes, you just need to taste around to find what you like. Argentina’s cocktail of choice is one written for my tastebuds – Fernet con cola. Fernet Branca is a potently bitter herbal Italian liqueur, for those with a taste for the medicinal. They say it doesn’t cause hangovers and once again I proved them wrong.

And then there’s the boeuf. Which deserves its rightful place in the beef big leagues, along with kobe/wagyu, Galician and Tuscan beefsteaks. I’m told grain-finished is becoming a little more prevalent, but if it was, I didn’t notice – all the beef around tastes grass-fed, from slightly older (and larger) cows. If a little chew gets me a rich beefy essence, I’m willing to make that trade. The cuts in Argentina tend to be much larger than what we get here in the US, and then again all the cuts are not exactly the same either. But the flavour of this beef is just outstanding and I would never think of adulterating it with butter or sauce, maybe a little micro-spritz of chimichurri, but the steaks are plenty fat, juicy, and rich in beefiness. You can really taste it in the fat especially – take that charred-on-the-outside-melty-on-the-inside knob of fat off your ribeye and close your eyes, you’re going to paraíso.

The aforementioned ‘Golden Corral’, La Asador Estancia, was where we ended up on our first night, mostly due to the luring fire out-front:



Carne is a little shy at first, but he’ll come out of his shell soon enough:



Lechon was luscious, though they got the skin all wrong, you needed a bandsaw to cut through it:



The chorizo was a sleeper of a sausage, nicely spiced (not spicy though) and dotted with rich little fatty bits:



And then came the nearly 2.5 pound porterhouse, sizzling & smoking, and smelling stupendous.



Okay, so it wasn’t exactly Golden Corral, but it is an example of a fairly mediocre parilla for BA (and considered to be a tourist trap). It was great. I think the meal, with two bottles of tinto, amounted to something ridiculous like $30USD.

Asador El Estancia
Lavalle 941 (Centro)
(1047) Capital Federal, Buenos Aires
Tel: 54-11-4326-0330

La Cabrera mentioned upthread, is also allegedly a tourist trap, but it’s pretty clear they are operating at a different level. There were tourists to be sure, but on the Tuesday night we were there, there were also a ton of (what appeared to be) locals. No reservations on our part, but they kept the complimentary bubbly coming while we waited the short 15 minutes.

We placed an order for a caesar salad and chorizo when the waiter cut us off, shaking his head, “Too much.” My friend, later termed “El Gringo Chupacabra”, looked at him and continued with an order of house-made fusilli, some ham-topped-porterhouse and my ribeye. Forgive the terrible photo (very low light conditions), but here’s the spread:



The chorizo, a marvelous rendition, a little crumbly, but delicious all the same:



The pasta was excellent, for the few forkfuls I was able to manage:



And the righteous ribeye:



The steaks come with a banchan-style array of accompaniments, six with each steak (three on either side of your steer), and a little tray of seven additional ramekins. Lentils with olives, chickpea dip, quail eggs, mushrooms, garlic clove confit, pearl onions, mashed potatoes, mashed sweet potatoes, and a few other potato preps with various sauces. La Cabrera is a great place, loud and lively, and their pride of beef is obvious. They are clearly sourcing some excellent beef, and doing it full justice.

Buenos Aires deserves far more than two rushed days.

More on Mendoza later on.

tatterdemalion your post made me smile. I love BA, La Cabrerra really didn't feel like a tourist trap to me either, and even if it is, who cares? Ordering a pasta with all that food is just insane, given all the sides that come with the meat!

Thanks for the great pics. I've booked my table at La Cabrera for next week. They only take reservations at 8:30pm, and steered me towards the Norte location. I asked them to change it to the original location, but am still stuck at 8:30. (I wanted 10pm, but don't want to wait in a long line)

Ah, that picture from La Estancia brings back memories! I emailed it to my brother who accompanied me there.

One of the best meals I've ever had in my life was at Tomo Uno in B-A. Simply fabulous food, impeccable service, and a wonderfully well-matched winelist. (One warning: once they know you're American, they'll try to steer you toward the cab sauv, but don't let them do it! Insist that they recommend one of their best malbecs. Or, with whites, be sure to try the torrontes, oh yum!)

They've apparently done a makeover, since I was there a couple of years ago. But from the menu, they haven't made many changes there.

Geo
PS. If anyone goes to Bariloche, let me know: I know the best parrilla in the universe!

We will be going to Buenos Aires Thursday for a little over a week. I'm excited for the steak and the Italian food. Any other must try Italian food other than Guido's?

Thanks for recommending Tomo 1. We have reservations there this Friday and we are going to try Easter brunch at La Mansion at the Four Seasons.

I'm excited for it all. Any other suggestions welcome.

Take your camera, Blue! We'll be expecting a Full Report!

Have a great time, you'll love it!

Geo
PS. if you get some time, you should visit the cemetery where Eva Peron is buried, it's a real wonder of the world.

favorite phrase I learned while traveling through Argentina: "Estoy entre Mendoza y La Rioja." Mendoza and La Rioja are the two main wine-producing regions in the country. When you say you are "between Mendoza and La Rioja" it means you've been having a great time drinking, and you're at the height of your imbibing pleasure-state.

This was at -Estilio Criollo - Provoletta


also Estilo




Estilo house lomo


Cluny rack of lamb



Cluny charcuterie



Cluny filet



La Cabrerra El Norte



La Brigada half portion lomo



random food photos from the trip





and finally, I do reccomend the Eva Paron grave, it was very cool to go to that site. I've never seen crypts above sea level.

nicinchic, wow, great photos, taking me right back to the scene of the crimes. thanks so much !

Mendoza



The focus of our trip was really around Vendimia, the week-long annual wine harvest festival. If you’re ever planning on going to Mendoza, not a bad idea to plan it with Vendimia in mind. It’s a great time of year climate-wise (March); there are lots of little festivals, parties, shows & concerts around; more bodegas than you can shake a bottle at; amazing outdoor adventure activities in the area; and the whole town (and region, actually) just lights right up for the event.

Mendoza is centered around the Plaza Indepencia, and there are four other surrounding smaller parks (San Martin, Italia, Espana, Chile) arranged like the five side of a die. Plaza Italia has a three-night festival, which would require all three nights to sample everything there.

The festial has stands representing various regions of Italy, each with a representative menu.

Puglia



Fresh pasta, with somebody’s grandma tending to the gravy.

Pasta Fresca





And a tinto, of course:



Lasagna



Sausage & polenta:



Stuff:



Panini station:



Surprisingly, the longest line was for the pizza. I didn’t brave the line after having seen the ovens and the par-baked dough and, well, the line. The sausage topping I snagged from one of the kind folks assembling the pizzas was terrific though.

Pizza



Pepperoni:



Lactose tolerance:





One of the most memorable bites of the entire trip was this white wine chorizo.

White wine choripan:



Chorizo innards



And then I bumped into an old friend:





Porchetta:



There are surpisingly few wine-bars in Mendoza, but we did manage to find one that had a limited selection of flights, but some very notable wines and excellent food. It’ll set your tourist-trap alarms off, but it’s worthwhile to unplug the smoke detector and give it a go, you’ll be happy. The place is Mi Tierra.

Mi Tierra
Mitre 794 (Corner San Lorenzo)
Mendoza
54-261-425-0035

Before we went to Mi Tierra, we stopped at this place, but not to eat:



Carpaccio at Mi Tierra:



Empanadas (lamb, beef, sweetbread):



All three empanadas outstanding, but the surprise was the beef which was quite obviously from a good cut and high-quality cow and just cooked to a rosy pink. If I can recover the pics of the innards, I’ll add them in.

EDIT: adding in innard pics:

beef empanada



lamb empanada



And while I didn't mention it on the first go-around prior to this edit, there really wasn't much need to, the most vile two bites of the trip came from the local hot dog shop, Mr. Dog:



/EDIT

We met a Swiss guy and an Roman couple on a bodega tour and met them for dinner at a great parilla called La Barra, which is run by an Argentine-Italian couple.

La Barra:





Our goods:



Another one of our steaks:



Skirt:



Ribs:



This was on the second-last night of the festival, when there is a big carnival that parades through town with gauchos and performers. On any other night, showing up at 11pm for dinner would’ve been fine but the owners of La Barra reluctantly stayed open for us, so at the close of our meal we sent them and their table of friends a couple of bottles for thanks. They weren’t going to let us off easy though, so they invited us to their table where they asked us to introduce ourselves by singing our home-country’s national anthem. One of the owner’s friends was a boisterous bull-runner from Biarritz, who did quite the number on La Marseillaise. We ended up staying there until the wee hours of the morning, dozens of bottles of tinto later, singing (La Marseillaise many times), and yukking it up with new friends. Somewhere around 3am a whole barrage of random meats hit the grill – chicken gizzards, livers, kidneys, sweetbreads, etc. It was a magical night.

La Marseillaise:



The grand finale of Vendimia is, strangely, a beauty pageant where the harvest queen is selected, and it takes place in a Greek-style amphitheater in Plaza San Martin. The event attracts a couple college-football size crowds for what turns out to be one excrutiatingly long and boring selection process. Except for the greatest halftime show of all time. After introducing the harvest queen contestants, you are treated to an incredibly magnificent and moving 90-minute production of the Mendoza story and the meaning of wine to the culture, with thousands of singers & dancers and music & fireworks, before they conclude with the (painful) pageant nominations at the end.

I fell in love with Mendoza, and Argentina in general, and it will take several more trips before I even begin to understand the place.

Vendimia

Wow! tatter, great story, great pix!! We didn't make it to Mendoza, but obviously Next Time is beckoning! And oh! those parilla shots nearly broke our hearts. I can still hear the embers snapping, the fat on the meat crackling...

Thanks sooo much for the post!

Geo