Monday, December 22, 2008

Buenos Aires, in its glorious entirety




















Favorite. Vacation. Ever.

(And the perfect first blog post, I think. Forgive its length.)

Now you all know I’m quite the Europhile. And certainly all my European Vacations (insert National Lampoon theme music here) will always rank highly. But BA had two things Europe doesn’t: affordability and good weather. BA was boiling hot the whole time I was there; it was consistently in the 90s, with lows in the 70s, and the heat index one day got up to 106. Granted, that’s a little hot, even for me. I couldn’t really complain, though—after all, I was coming back to a winter in New York. Europe gets hot in the summer, but that’s when the prices skyrocket. I’ve only ever gone in the shoulder season, and we’re all aware of how much I spent last year in Rome. Which is why I chose BA this year—I needed to vacation somewhere where my crappy American dollar would go a lot further.

And oh, it did. My hotel was $18 a night. The most I ever paid for a meal—this was a nine-course tasting menu, with wine pairings—was $95. I could get across town on the subway for the equivalent of a quarter. It was so nice to be able to go to a place and divide rather than multiply to get the exchange rate. It’s nice to feel wealthy, especially when you aren’t. The amount in pesos of anything was about what I would pay in dollars in New York—except there I got to divide by 3.4.

BA was cheap, hot, and full of great food, great wine, and friendly people. My Spanish is, how you say, not so bueno, but I can say the essentials: Donde esta el baño? and Una tabla para una persona, por favor. Because of the favorable exchange rate, I could eat at fancy-pants restaurants twice a day, with drinks before and after, with cab rides, and still not feel like I was being extravagant. Warning, though: it is not advisable to eat oysters and drink three-quarters of a bottle of Viognier at lunch and then go walking around in 95-degree heat. Your stomach will not like you. Just sayin’.

The hotel I was staying in wasn’t really—it was a private apartment, in a residential neighborhood in the heart of the city. The lady who owns it (and sometimes also lives in it) rents out the bedrooms as a sort of bed-and-breakfast, in a very craigslist type of arrangement. It was a cute place, and for $18 a night per person (with breakfast) I could get around not having a private bathroom. Ana was very friendly and helpful, and even took us out one night. More on that later. The neighborhood, called Caballito (pronounced Cabashito, as Argentines pronounce the Spanish double-L as an S), was light-years removed from the trendier touristy neighborhoods, which was exactly what I wanted. I’d heard horror stories about the cab drivers ripping off English-speaking tourists, but I never had a problem, perhaps because I was returning to such a residential address.

When I arrived, I was too wired to sleep, so I headed out to meet up with a fellow LC alum. Andrew Miller (class of 2000) runs a wine export business in BA, and he and his girlfriend and brother accompanied me to Wine Tour Urbano. The wine tour met at a street corner in Palermo (the trendy touristy shopping district), and for 45 pesos ($15), you got a commemorative wineglass and unlimited tastings at the various stores that were participating. I must say, it’s very civilized to be able to wander the streets with a glass of wine. The wine was good, too. Highlights included the Cosecha Malbec 2004 and the Moscato Rosso 2007 (a dessert wine, made from half grapes and half raisins).

Afterwards, I went to my first fancy-pants restaurant, Thymus. Because I could, I ordered the foie gras ($10) and the Kobe beef ($45), with a bottle of Durigutti Bonarda 2006 ($15). Wine by the glass hasn’t caught on in Argentina yet—but that’s okay, because I could order a bottle there for the same price as a glass here, and if I didn’t finish it all, big deal. I suspect there was a translation issue with the foie gras, because I got goose liver (or possibly duck liver), not foie gras. It was still good, though, and the beef was as soft and buttery as the liver. The restaurant itself was cute, but a little lacking in atmosphere. Most of the other diners were far older than I was.

The next day, Saturday, I started off with a wander through the zoo. The zoo there is small, and doesn’t have the greatest variety of animals. American-style animal enclosures, which are big and mimic the animal’s natural environment, haven’t caught on there, either. It was sad seeing big animals in small spaces. But you can feed the animals there. They sell buckets of animal pellets, and the children are quite unabashed at hurling handfuls of them at every animal—usually to the animal’s delight. I didn’t buy a bucket, but that didn’t keep the animals from coming right up to the railing and begging. I had a giraffe smell my head, as if he couldn’t believe my audacity in withholding food.

Then I walked down to Don Julio, a traditional Argentine parilla, and had a lovely lunch of beer, empanadas, and grilled sweetbreads. I walked around, realized my shortsightedness in not visiting the baño before I left, and had a second (much smaller) lunch at La Cabrera in order to partake of their facilities. Another traditional parilla, I skipped the traditional stuff and just had a salad and a bottle of Torrontes, which was blessedly cold but too sweet. The banana flambé I had for dessert wasn’t nearly as sweet.

However, the find of the day was Lobby, a small restaurant and wine bar unfashionably far north in an otherwise fashionable neighborhood. I arrived at 8 pm, killing time before my 10 pm dinner reservation (dinner in Argentina is 10 or 11 pm, which is like 8 pm in New York, which is like 6 pm everywhere else—eating before that is just so, so uncool). I was the only person there, so I struck up a conversation with the owner. Lobby features all Argentine wines, and is one of the very few places to offer wines by the glass. The owner picked all the wines personally, and he made several suggestions. I selected a Viognier Dulce (sweet, but became much fruitier once it opened up) and the Las Maza Reserva Cabernet Sauvignon 2005.

Argentina is famous for its Malbec, but Bonarda is the next big grape coming out of there—the locals have become tired of Malbec, and they’re just beginning to discover Pinot Noir. Lobby’s owner recommended the Torrontes from Crios and Colomé, the Mora Negra Finca Las Moras 2006 (Malbec blended with Bonarda) and the Barda Pinot Noir 2007.

Dinner was at Maat, a members-only supper club. Fortunately, non-members like myself can eat there up to three times before having to join. It was a lovely place, very intimate and relaxed, so I helped myself to the tasting menu with wine tasting. I hope I guessed correctly as to what I was actually eating—the waiters only spoke Spanish, and my Spanish is of course not nearly advanced enough to figure out the elaborate food descriptions they rattled off. The amuse bouche was a Ferran Adria-inspired “olive” (olive juice molded into the shape of an olive with no skin, held together by Ferran Adria magic). The first course was a beef carpaccio wrapped around goat? cheese in the shape of ravioli, with capers and cheese shavings and some sort of mini crouton, with a Los Perdices Viognier 2007. This Viognier, unlike the previous ones, was perfectly balanced—fruity and luscious without being overly sweet. The second course, foie gras (it actually was foie gras this time) with cranberries?, pistachios, jamon and jellied Torrontes on a toast. (Wine Jello! Why don’t we have this in the States?) Next came langoustines with calamari and tiny grilled baby squid, on I’m assuming a squid ink risotto, since it was black. There was also some sort of cold seafood salsa on it. I liked the tiny baby squid the best. The aforementioned Barda Pinot Noir 2007 was up next, though it was a bit tannic for my taste. I got some sort of thick flaky white fish with chimichurri (traditionally served with beef) and roasted veggies and olives on top. Then a Monte Cinco Malbec—really tannic—with some sort of beef so rare it ran blood. Yum. Served with grilled sweetbreads and carrots. Dessert was two sorbets, possibly blood orange and mint, with no sugar added to either, and a Los Perdices ice wine Malbec, which was faintly reminiscent of cold cough syrup. There was also a cherry soup with some sort of ice cream, and the various obligatory petit fours.

A great meal, with good wines; the restaurant would go in my top three, although the atmosphere was a little…reserved for my taste. The Malbecs in BA as a whole were all a bit too sharp for me, in addition to being weirdly soft and clingy with a soap-like mouth residue. The fruit got lost. Plus it was entirely too hot for big, heavy red wines—I concentrated on the whites, and discovered Argentina makes some fine, fine Viogniers (which is good, Torrontes tended to be too sweet for me).

As a side note, almost all the music in BA was in English. The cab drivers were, to a one, enamored of 80s music, even though none of them spoke English. Speaking of cab drivers, Argentina is suffering from a new and pernicious economic disaster—a lack of change. (This is a great article about that.) Paying with cash is a fine art, because there is a shortage of coin and small bills, and because no one is able or willing to give you what little change they possess. Cab drivers expect exact change, or the closest equivalent possible. Paying for a 12-peso ride with a 20-peso bill will elicit much wailing and gnashing of teeth, and forget about paying for anything with a 50. Trying to use a 100-peso bill is like trying to pay for coffee and a bagel with a bar of platinum. Coins, like quarters on laundry day, are worth more than their face value. I mostly solved this problem by paying my restaurant tabs on my credit card and then asking them to break a 100—since I was eating in nice places, they didn’t mind. Especially since you have to leave a cash tip, they haven’t yet figured out the technology for leaving credit card tips.

I often mock the MTA—for good reason—but at least the NYC subways run 24/7. It was a nasty shock to head out for a day of shopping in BA on Sunday, only to be brought up short by a completely closed subway system. At 11 am. Now, who decided that Argentineans didn’t need to go anywhere before 1 pm on Sundays? Apparently the same person decided people didn’t need to buy anything on Sundays either, because a lot of the shops were closed (which, admittedly, makes more sense than closing the subways. Which also shut down at 10 pm. However, due to the raucous night life, they reopen at 6 am, just as most people are heading home from the clubs to get washed up and go to work.)

I did manage to buy a super-cute silver clutch and I had a lovely lunch at Cabernet with pate and sweetbreads and a bottle of Fond du Cave Reserva Bonarda 2004. That’s the way to spend an afternoon—with good food and good wine, in the warm sun, with a good book, and a bathroom within easy reach. The sweetbreads were in some sort of cream sauce, which was good, but too heavy for a 90-plus degree day. The palate cleanser was really the highlight of the meal—a little ginger sorbet, with a ginger liqueur poured over it. Then I had pears baked in Cabernet for dessert.

Afterwards I bumbled out into the heat and made it to the Evita Museum, MALBA (their Museum of Modern Art) and Museo des Bellas Artes (everything else). The Evita Museum was tiny, but in a great old house; fortunately Sundays were pay-what-you-wish for the museums. MALBA was very air-conditioned, which I highly appreciated, but was smaller than I anticipated (only a couple of floors, with some sort of new exhibit involving many tables full of differently-colored cabbages. Seriously.) Museo des Bellas Artes was exactly what you picture an art museum to be—large, full of paintings and sculpture, with many floors and a confusing layout. But free on Sundays.

For dinner I ended up at La Cabrera again. A lot of restaurants were closed, too, and my pick for the evening was among them. La Cabrera is best as a lunch restaurant—I got there in the middle of the dinner rush (about 10 pm) and it was mobbed. The wait line was 30 people deep, and we were all banished to the sidewalk outdoors as there was literally no room inside. Fortunately we got free champagne during the lengthy wait. The steak I got there (ojo de bife) was enormous. Easily 2 or 3 pounds. I wouldn’t buy that much meat if I were having a dinner party for 8 people, and that was considered a single serving. But it was tender, and so juicy, and rare enough to drip blood. Between the appetizer (also enormous) and the various sides that automatically come with the beef, I had enough food in front of me to choke a horse. And I got to watch Anthony Bourdain in Spanish on the bar TV. Too bad everyone around me spoke English—La Cabrera is apparently the hot restaurant for every British, American and Australian tourist in town, most of whom refused to speak Spanish to the waiters and were generally behaving like wankers.

On Monday I enjoyed lunch with the Buenos Aires office of my company (interesting note: they have bidets in the employee bathrooms. Makes you wonder what they’re doing at work). I explored Recoleta Cemetery (like Pere Lachaise in Paris) and bought some fancy teas at Tealosophy.

That night Ana, the woman running the B&B I was staying in, took everyone staying there to a drum show and then to a tango show. There were about 7 or 8 of us total—me and then a big group of people from California. The shows were literally across the tracks, in a neighborhood I would never have ventured into by myself. The drum show was just what it sounds like, and apparently an Argentine pop culture phenomenon—a “band” consisting solely of different kinds of drums, playing in a large open-air warehouse in a crappy neighborhood. There must have been over a thousand people there, mostly younger, all dancing and smoking pot and drinking really, really cheap beer (I paid 10 pesos for a liter of beer, which is about $2.50 or $3. For a liter of beer.) When the combined outdoor and body heat became too much, we all left and went to a milonga, or tango show, just down the street.

The milonga is a sort of interactive tango experience—you can dance, or watch, according to your preference, and there was a gentleman there giving lessons for those who wanted them. The show itself took place in another huge abandoned warehouse, with three-story ceilings and an air of general decrepitude that BAM paid a lot of money to imitate. It looked like something from Pirates of the Caribbean. It was hot, and dark, and we were starving, but eventually empanadas were procured, along with more 10-peso liter beer.

Tuesday was lunch at Chila, Second favorite meal there. I went for lunch, and it was spectacular—I wonder what dinner would have been like. It was even hotter on Tuesday (the heat index was up to 106), and I was determined to avoid as much of the heat as possible. I decided to have a long, luxurious, air-conditioned lunch overlooking the water. The nice thing about BA is that no place is frigidly over-air-conditioned like every place in NY. In July in NY, it’s necessary to carry a sweater because interiors are chilled down to below 70 degrees. Half the city employs portable heaters at their desks at work because of this. Air-conditioning in BA was a gentle 80 or 82 degrees; much more pleasant than outdoors, but not so cold you had to cover up and then sneeze the rest of the afternoon. No icy blasts, no freezing halfway through a meal, no having to carry a wrap everywhere. Much more civilized than a sudden 35-degree temperature drop. I really must move somewhere warm.

Anyway. I started with a bottle of Escorihuela Gascon Viognier 2008. My favorite bottle of the trip, and the top Viognier I’ve ever had. It was lovely—sweet without being sugary, very fruity but crisp and well-balanced. It opened up beautifully and I didn’t get that nasty sugar-withdrawal headache I usually get after a lot of white wine or champagne. The amuse bouche was smoked salmon strips with sour cream and chives and what I think was some sort of cucumber slaw. I then had four enormous half-shell oysters (each the size of my hand) on a bed of rock salt, with tiny bits of lemon flesh (not lemon juice) and a shot of champagne. The oysters were rich and creamy, not briny at all and the perfect accompaniment to the wine. The main course was black hake in a mussel broth, with mussels and some sort of mashed veg, possibly parsnip. I hadn’t had this before—it’s a sturdy, flaky white fish and it had a good char on it. The mussel broth really brought out some interesting complexities of taste and for a hot dish was surprising appropriate for the weather.

I then got a cheese plate—brie, morbier, and something else. My one complaint about Argentina is its lack of good stinky cheese. Various other dessert bits followed—a strawberry sorbet, an espresso crème brulee with a cookie, mango tea. The tea came with a silver tray of brown and white sugar and cocoa.

More walking ensued—along the waterfront, into San Telmo, into Walrus Books and various antique shops. The heat got to me and I ended up spending that night camped under the AC vent in my hotel room—only to be foiled by rolling blackouts at some point in the night. Even without arctic blasts, BA’s energy system is often overcome by all the AC usage in the summer. By the time I left, I’d wandered into several energy-free restaurants. There’s no place quite so stuffy as a airless restaurant.

I’d originally come to BA with the intention of getting protein poisoning—eating my way through a metric ton of fine grass-fed beef, with good red wine every night. Well, it was far too hot for either one; by mid-week, my stomach revolted at the thought of heavy red wines and charred steak when it was 95 degrees out. Instead, I concentrated on fine dining, the kind of nine-course tasting menus I could never afford in New York. And frankly, that was better than a lot of beef and red wine. The food was amazing, and cheap, and I was steered into some wonderful white wines that I might not have found if it hadn’t been so hot.

Which led me to a cooking class on Wednesday, one of my favorite experiences of the trip. Teresita is a little old Argentinean lady, living in a suburb of BA, and she runs English-language cooking classes for tourists and visitors. The class I signed up for was a half-day of learning how to make traditional beef empanadas and the asado, the traditional Argentine grill. We started at the butcher shop, selecting the various meats for the grill (skirt steak, short ribs, flank steak, pork loin, sausage, blood sausage, tripe, sweetbreads and beef kidney) and then made the empanadas. Everything was wonderful, of course, complemented by a Torrontes Trapiche Origen 2007 with the empanadas and a Malbec Trapiche Origen 2006 with the meats. It was a great group of people, about 10 or 12 total.

I attempted to recreate the empanadas when I got home. While they turned out fine, the dough I made was much more difficult to work with than I remembered. I attributed this to problems of translation—the recipe Teresita gave us was in grams (who can translate 500 grams of flour into cups?), and so I had to eyeball it at home. More experimentation is necessary.

That night I went to Club 647, a hip new restaurant in San Telmo, a slightly sketchy neighborhood. It was just like Buddakan in New York, with no air conditioning. Seriously. Another victim of the rolling blackouts. I bailed and went around the corner to La Vineria de Gaulterio Bolivar.

Other people have called this a meal worth traveling around the globe for (like here) and I have to rate this as the second greatest meal of my life (just after the first greatest, in Rome, at La Pergola, with Chila as number 3). La Vineria is new, just under a year old, and the chef studied with Ferran Adria in Spain. Since no one can get a reservation at Adria’s restaurant, El Bulli, (2 million annual requests for 8,000 dinner seats), having dinner at La Vineria is as close as you’re likely to come. At about 1/20th of the price. My dinner at La Vineria was a four-hour, nine-course molecular gastronomy delight, and total price (with wine pairings) came in at about $69. Compared to my $500 bill at La Pergola, that’s quite a deal. Frankly, anyone can have a great meal at a three-Michelin-star restaurant in a four-star hotel in Rome, that’s glamour dining at its finest. It’s much more rare and special to have a fantastic meal in a crappy, rundown neighborhood, in a restaurant that the guidebooks haven’t yet discovered.

La Vineria is a tiny, unassuming place, with perhaps 20 seats in a storefront. The tasting menu is the only option, based on whatever the chef can get fresh at the markets. There’s only one seating a night, meaning everyone was getting the same course at about the same time. All the tables were talking to each other, comparing notes, and most people were taking notes and pictures—it’s quite the foodie destination.

I started with two wines; a Colome Torrontes 2007, and a Los Perdices Pinot Grigio 2008. The Torrontes was, surprisingly, a little spicy; both were very light and fruity, not heavy or sweet at all. The first course was a series of four bites. There was a “bread viniagrette,” a little pocket of bread with vinegar and oil inside; a sort of fried cheese bite; a “pepper ravioli,” a tiny globe of roasted red pepper juice; and a slice of apple with a chip of paprika—like taffy, sweet but with a spicy kick.

Next came an octopus and salmon ceviche, served in shot glass, and a bowl of curried almonds. Then came the infamous hot and cold pea soup, a glass of pea soup cold on one side and hot on the other. Be careful how you drink this—I managed to get the hot side going into my mouth first, instead of both at the same time, and scalded my tongue in the process. The salad of 30 vegetables followed (I didn’t count) in a warm dill reduction, with a Diaz Pionero Roble Chardonnay 2006.

The next course was one of the most inventive. This was a slow-cooked poached egg (slow-cooked for 50 minutes at 63 degrees, though they failed to specify whether that was Celsius or Fahrenheit) served with a sheep’s cheese foam with a sort of lime juice thing at the bottom and truffle oil drizzled all over the top. The egg and the foam made a great flavor combination, and of course the textures were intriguing. Next came a “surf and turf” variation, lamb and scallops with mashed artichokes. The lamb was tender to the point of flaking apart, but it was too well-done for me (Argentines do like their meat very well-done).

With a Tempus Malbec Rose 2007 came a dish of octopus topped with a tomato foam, served with tiny cubes of solidified balsamic vinegar, an olive oil powder, and smoked paprika. The octopus was a little chewy, and it was hard to taste the tomato in the foam. It was the most interesting-sounding dish, but the flavors didn’t quite meld. Then I got a salmon filet served in a warm fish broth with ginger and lime. The salmon was lovely, but I think it would have been even more interesting served as a carpaccio or a tartare with the hot broth cooking just a little.

Next came a Tapiz Merlot Reserva 2005, with more lamb and fava beans, then a beef filet with a chimichurri foam and an interesting twist on french fries. There was a tall crispy potato tube, filled with liquid potato inside. The beef was very rare (refreshingly). Dessert was a fortified late harvest Malbec, a tiny scoop of chocolate ice cream with a reduction of goat cheese, an almond cookie, and a smear of orange. To finish off the evening, we all got a cotton candy stick of pepper foam. Imagine eating a pepper-flavored cotton candy, with no sugar, and just the faintest hint of green tea.

It’s a good thing I had this amazing meal, because the next day was largely a disappointment in terms of food. Juana M was super cute but not a lunch place—I would have enjoyed it far more at dinner. I suddenly remembered it was Thanksgiving Day, and stopped off at an American ex-pat bar, El Alamo. They were serving a traditional turkey dinner, with Budweiser and NFL. It was quite a culture shock seeing American NFL, in English, after a week of speaking Spanish. I was looking forward to dinner at Oviedo, but they didn’t have power when I showed up. I gamely attempted to soldier through, but after an afternoon in a smoky bar, sitting in an airless, lightless, un-air-conditioned restaurant wasn’t working for me. Fortunately their seafood risotto made an excellent breakfast the next morning. The baby fried squid appetizer, served with sweet potato cubes and a green swirl with hidden roasted peppers and onions, was delicious.

Friday’s lunch was sushi at Osaka. While I’ve had better sushi in New York, the seafood salad there was outstanding—made from real seaweed, with real ginger on the side, not that pickled stuff from a jar you usually get. And cold sake is an excellent substitute for chilled white wine on a hot day. There was lots more shopping that afternoon; BA has a lot of great little funky jewelry shops, where I concentrated my shopping dollars. There are of course great handbags and leather accessories to be had, but I’m not much of a handbag collector and my big American feet were too big for their cute little South American shoes. The clothing there, with the obvious exception of the leather, is not very well-made, and the largest size most stores carry is an 8. Even though I am an 8, I still wasn’t willing to be considered “extra-large.”

My last dinner was at Casa SaltShaker, another trip highlight. Casa SaltShaker is an underground restaurant run by an ex-pat American, Dan Perlman, recently transplanted from New York. He used to be the wine buyer for Heights Chateau in Brooklyn. Now he runs dinner parties out of his Recoleta apartment; two or three times a week, he creates a different menu, and he hosts twelve people at 90 pesos a pop (35 extra with wine pairing). This is a great experience; relaxed, congenial, with great food and wine, and a really interesting mix of people. The night I was there was an homage to Central African cooking. Most of the people there were fellow foodies; we all had great fun sharing restaurant tips and stories, and I made sure to chat up La Vineria and Chila. I also had great fun making the acquaintance of an extremely good-looking 24-year-old law student from UT Austin, who apparently was a regular at Casa SaltShaker during his semester abroad. He was, shall we say, the perfect ending to a wonderful vacation.

So, to sum up.
Top Restaurant Recommendations:
La Vineria de Gualterio Bolivar
Chila
Lobby
Cabernet
Don Julio
Maat

Top Wines Tasted:
Escorihuela Gascon Viognier 2008
Los Perdices Viognier 2007
Colome Torrontes 2007
Los Perdices Pinot Grigio 2008
Diaz Pionero Roble Chardonnay 2006
Cosecha Malbec 2004 and Moscato Rosso 2007
Justin Isosceles Reserve 2004 Paso Robles

Highly Recommended Places I Didn’t Get A Chance to Go To:
Pura Tierra
Sucre
Casa Cruz
Happening
Aramburu
Tomo Uno
El Gran Danzon


More pics here (along with pics from Rome!).

3 comments:

KB said...

Hi Jenny
Wonderful review! I felt compelled to comment on the Malbec and Moscato wines- two of my favorites with Moscato d'asti as one of my top all time faves.
Merry Christmas!
Kirsten

ThatTallGuy said...

Enjoyed tripping over your post while surfing. :)

FYI, you can't simply convert grams to cups and expect an accurate result. (I know, I've tried.) The volume measure depends on how the flour was made, how it is packed (of course,) and even things like humidity and temperature. You really need to weigh the flour to get a reliable measure. (500g is 17.6 oz, if your scale doesn't do metric.)

Unknown said...

Hi!
Buenos Aires is one of my favourite places to go because of the reasons you've mentioned. Thanks to the exchange rate, everything is REALLY affordable!!! I stayed at one apartment for rent Buenos Aires and it was really great and cheap!!!