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Juana M.

This is our go-to parilla, blessed in all of its food, probably because it is located underneath a church just off of Libertador. We learned about it from a commenter who used to live in Argentina. This place is truly a mainstay for us. The meat is wonderful, they have a ginormous salad bar, the prices are reasonable, the atmosphere is classy, it is not touristy, there is seating for smokers as well as non-smokers (not really a plus for me, but you smokers will be happy). The only knock would be the desserts, which we have learned to avoid. Go out for helado afterward.

La Brigada

If you have friends or family in town and want them to experience old-world Argentinian service in a classic parilla, this is where you should bring them. Ian used to live in the building next door and would routinely witness VIPs arriving, such as police escorted buses bringing the national fútbol team to eat at the restaurant. The meat we had here was truly wonderful, and we were very pleasantly surprised by their caprese salad (astonishingly fresh vine-ripened tomatoes). The service also was well executed…all in all we quite enjoyed it. More good news, they have recently expanded, so it’s a much easier to gain a seat. In the area of the dining room where we enjoyed or meal, all of the patrons appeared to be Porteños.

La Cabrera

This parilla in Palermo Soho would receive my vote for most overrated in the city. It is in every guidebook and is overrun with tourists. Pictured above is the lomito, which I ordered, and after Zelda tasted it she announced, “Mommy’s meat is watery.” She was right. As you can see in the photo, they have flashy presentation, but it falls flat when it comes to execution. Each main course is served with various inedible condiments, including peas in some sort of a mayonnaise sauce, a ketchup-mayonnaise sauce, an onion relish, a bit of hearts of palm, garlic potatoes (uber garlic flavor), and carrot and potatoes in mayonnaise. We disliked all of the condiments and hated to waste the food. Every table also receives a round platter filled with more circular little condiment bowls containing other small dishes, most of which we disliked as well. I would have much preferred to get rid of every little condiment bowl on the table and eaten an ensalada mixta instead. The servings are HUGE, one could easily split an entree between two adults. On the plus side, they end your meal with a nice flute of champagne!

Grillmaster Tom brings you this recap.

Sunday is the traditional day for asado in Argentina. As parties go, this one has a pretty simple formula: start a fire, grill up a big pile of meat, hang out with family and friends for the afternoon, and eat until you are no longer able to move.

Our current apartment comes complete with a beautiful parilla, and we’ve hosted one asado already. But, on that occasion, my duties involved nothing more than making the salad, since our friend Dani expertly handled all of the grilling. For various reasons, I had not yet taken the helm of the parilla. I had not yet assumed the role of asador.

(To my mind’s ear, “asador” is always said with great drama. Think “matador” and say it with a flourish and, perhaps, a stamping of your foot.)

Why the hesitation to grill?

For one, you can’t start grilling until you’ve got some meat, and I’m intimidated by the butcher. Even in the US, I never looked forward to buying meat. I would often go marching up to the meat counter, recipe from Cook’s Illustrated in hand, and explain that I was looking for a specific cut. (Cook’s Illustrated has very strong opinions on which cuts are best for their recipes.) The butcher would then tell me they didn’t have said cut and look at me like I was crazy for asking.

And, that was in English! Here, I get to do the whole song and dance in broken Castellano and pantomime.

Furthermore, I’m totally spoiled by my gas grill in the US. Press a button and you’re ready to cook ten minutes later. Unfortunately, there’s no such thing as a push-button parilla. Oh no, you’ve got to go all primitive and caveman-like and get a fire started using nothing more than matches and a bag of charcoal.

Since I had no kindling, no lighter fluid, and little experience, I was concerned about my fire-starting skills. Could I really set the charcoal ablaze with some scrap paper and an empty Fruit Loops box? At first, it didn’t look too promising. Zoe offered to help by throwing dried leaves onto the top of the fire, and while that pleased the inner pyromaniac in both of us, it didn’t make the slightest difference to actually getting the charcoal lit.

In the end, Zoe saved the day. She spotted a few dead branches caught in the tree that overhangs our terrace, and using a rope she got at a knot-tying demonstration, she was able to lasso several and pull them down. We broke up the branches, created a little teepee of twigs, and pretty soon we had a roaring fire going.

With that problem solved, I started grilling. And, I didn’t really know when to stop. As the photos show, for just a family of four, I grilled a lot of meat. (We call that having an asado, Ian-style, since he started the family tradition of buying way too much meat for the occasion.)

The results from my first outing as asador:

* Chicken. Perfectly done. Mostly due to Michele’s brining and her expertly prepared wet rub of cumin, lemon, garlic, olive oil and chilies.

* Bife de Chorizo. (New York Strip Steak) Sadly, these were a little over-done. In Argentina, they would call this level of cooking a punto. They definitely were not jugoso (rare). Obviously, I was paying too much attention to chowing down on the chicken at the time, and not enough to my steaks still on the grill.

* Pork Roast. This was the wild card. I’m not even sure what cut of pork this is, and since we were all too stuffed with beef and chicken to eat any more, we just wrapped it up and put it in the fridge. Hopefully, it can form the basis of a leftover dinner later this week.

All in all, not too bad for a first attempt.

I admit that the blue-screen photo here is less than appetizing, but because the hue shows through the clear plastic containers, removing it would be too big a chore in Photoshop. (And this is the color of our dining room table!)

Laid out in all of its splendor in the pic to the left is a bife de lomo (tenderloin), grilled chicken, mashed potatoes (very buttery — not healthy but yummy) and an ensalada mixta (this is a salad with lettuce, tomato and onion). All of this was delivered to our door for approximately $16.50.

This food is the lifeline for our family while living in Buenos Aires for three reasons:

1. We can order this meal from one of a zillion neighborhood cafes at any time of the day or night. (Bottom line, we can eat at 6:00 pm and get the Zs to bed on time — a constant struggle, as you know.)
2. They will deliver it to our door in 20 to 30 minutes!
3. It is tasty and we all enjoy it.

We have learned that the key to a successful cafe food experience is to stick with the menu basics (those listed above) and don’t get fancy. That means we stay away from the three “p”s: pasta (often mushy and overdone with inconsistent sauces), pizza (usually an inch of cheese with no tomato sauce or veggies), or pork (can be overdone and dry).

If you stay with steak and potatoes in Argentina, it’s hard to go wrong.

We have been to Restó (Sociedad Central de Arquitectos) twice for dinner, and we love, love love everything about it.

The atmosphere: it is a charming space with simple clean lines and a decided lack of pretension. The intimate dining area has seating for approximately 28 patrons.

The service: there are four waitstaff poised to see to the needs of these 28 lucky clients in a very professional manner.

The food: There are four choices of three-course meals on the menu, which you can mix and match, if you so choose. (The menu changes frequently, but I’m not sure exactly how often.) During our recent visit, I had the most wonderful vine-ripened tomato salad accompanied by a few leaves of exotic basil as well as a generous serving of fresh mozzarella (yes, that’s right) all tossed with a nice light dressing. Having a tasty vine-ripened tomato was frankly orgasmic. I had to quit closing my eyes while I was eating! My main course was pan-seared lamb, cooked rare, that had a lovely salty crust. Dessert was a petite, but incredibly rich, warm chocolate cake with a small scoop of mascarpone ice cream.

Final rave: portion sizes are reasonable — you can actually eat all three courses. (Tom also had their wine pairing with each course, and they were all wonderful.)

This restaurant is only open for dinner on Thursday and Friday nights, so make your reservations now. (Photo above is of one of the paintings exhibited in the dining room by Maria Eugenia Cordero.)

On Sunday, in a Jumbo-induced shopping haze (similar to an Ikea-induced shopping haze), Tom purchased the pepper (pimienta) pictured here. (Pepper is not a commonly-used spice in Argentina. We generally buy it in containers, such as this, that have their own little grinder on the top.)

Yesterday, we made pork chops with home made apple sauce for dinner (yummy). Naturally, we salted and peppered the chops before throwing them in the pan for some searing. When everything was cooked to perfection, I sat down and almost immediately brought the chop to my mouth for a big chomp. I stopped in mid-bite though because I caught the whiff of a strange odor that I don’t normally associate with pork. I moved my nose nearer to the slab of cerdo, attempting to place the strange bouquet… . “Cloves?” I said to Tom. His chop rapidly greeted his nostrils and after an assessing sniff, he agreed with me.

Digging into a bit o’ research, we have discovered that “Pimienta de Jamaica” is not pepper, but rather allspice, cleverly disguised as “Pimienta Negra” in a pepper grinding jar waiting to trap a hapless male shopper at the Jumbo. I have never seen allspice in its whole berry form and have since learned that it is in the same family as cloves (Myrtaceae), but possesses a more mild flavor with cinnamon and nutmeg overtones as well.

Who knew? (I’ve been saying that a lot lately!)

We are within walking distance of a bunch of different Mexican restaurants in our new abode, so we thought we would give one a whirl tonight and ended up at Xalapa. We haven’t yet tried Mexican food here in Buenos Aires, so we were pretty excited.

Xalapa opens at 8:30 pm and it starts filling up fast with Porteños. (You know a restaurant is popular if Argentines start flowing in before 10:00 pm.) I would recommend a reservation if you want to dine during prime time. If you show up early, you can get a table without a reservation.

In terms of a review, we would give the restaurant mixed marks. The interior was nice and comfortable and the service was good. Positives for the meal included very enjoyable guacamole, a pretty decent margarita, and the tortillas, though not the real McCoy, were certainly reasonable. On the negative side, our main courses were not well executed. Tom had a chicken with mole that was overcooked and bland. The girls and I shared a plate of different meats cooked in various traditional ways, as well as some refried beans. Unfortunately, everything on the platter was rather tasteless, as if it was prepared without a single spice. (A very picante sauce is available on the side if you ask for it.)

We had a good time, but I don’t know that we would rank it high on our list of places to which we would return for a meal.

Now that our family unit is back in BA, I thought I would share some of the challenges we have been facing living la vida expat with kids, as well as some of our crazy plans to address those challenges!

CHALLENGES

1. School hours are long. We appreciate that the Zs don’t have as much homework as they had in the US. But, they attend school from 8 am to 5 pm, which we are finding is just too long. By the time we pick them up, get home, cook dinner, eat, and clean up, it’s time for bed. It leaves little time for them to have any extracurricular activities or hang out with their parents and still get to bed at a reasonable hour.
2. The English half of the school day is underutilized time. We thought that sending them to a Spanish/English bilingual school might be a good idea so they could have some time in English to balance out having to learn Spanish from scratch. In truth, the English level of their peers is well below a native-speaker’s level, so the class time is less than engaging.
3. The Zs are losing some of their Mandarin. We try to speak Chinese as much as possible (it’s our secret language when we’re out and about in the city), but there’s little we can do for their writing since I can only reproduce a few characters. And, with their current school schedule, it’s hard to find time for additional tutoring.
4. We are always working against the Argentine schedule. I call the kids here “Coca-Cola Powered” because it’s gotta be the caffeine that keeps ’em going. Wee Argentinians are up about three hours later than my kids but seem very perky in the morning. Unfortunately, my stodgy American kids need a lot of sleep to feel decent and not be growley all day long. It’s tough to maintain a reasonable sleeping schedule when you are fighting an entire nation’s predilection to stay up late. (Yes, there is a theme here — getting our kids to bed at a decent hour is nigh on impossible.)
5. Healthy eating is a struggle. Argentina does wine, ice cream, and beef really really well, but fruits and vegetables…not so much. Of course, we are incredibly spoiled coming from the Pacific Northwest. It’s hard to adjust to having only two types of apples available (Granny Smith and Red Delicious), no heirloom tomatoes, no multiple varieties of locally-grown cherries, no amazing berries, no farmer’s markets… . But aside from lamenting the loss of PNW produce, the lack of produce variety as well as the poor quality makes it very hard to feed our children in a matter that we consider to be healthy, even when we are doing our own cooking. (Luckily, the girls are able to choke down less-than-tasty produce because they understand the importance of eating fruits and vegetables, even if they don’t taste as good as they did back home.) This was not a challenge we anticipated before moving here.

CRAZY (and mundane) SOLUTIONS

1. We are going to begin “Worldschooling” (a phrase coined by my friend Mel and also by some other traveling home schoolers). We approached the Z’s academic institution to ask them if they would allow us to enroll the girls in the school for only the morning portion of the day (which is Spanish) and one afternoon a week (which is field day). For four afternoons a week, we want to bring them home for some learnin’, Michele and Tom style. (Yes, I know…never say never!) To make a long story even longer, we met with the various functionaries at the primary and administrative levels yesterday (biting our nails) and they gave us the green light! (All the while stressing that this has never been done before and that they are only approving it on a provisional basis which will not be extended to any other families.) So the great experiment begins.

   We want to use the afternoons for private Chinese tutoring (the girls and I will take classes together); English, math, and geography homeschooling; and, extracurricular sporting activities (we may take up some family horseback riding lessons and family time at a tennis center). Crap, writing this makes me realize how much freaking work we have to do!

2. Try alternative produce options. Please see my thread on BA Expats about possible produce procurement options. A lot of contributors had great ideas and we will be trying some of these. Also, we are going to attempt to integrate food shopping into school pick up time in Belgrano, since it will be in the middle of the day, and incorporate meal planning and prep into the home school curricula.

We are constantly on the lookout for dining options that meet the following impossible criteria:

1. An exciting menu (for us, that means offering something besides milanesa, empanadas, steak, or a pizza with an inch of cheese); 2. Food that is palatable to both children and parents (often at odds with the previous item); 3. Being open before 8:00 pm on weekdays (so that we can catch a meal during the school week and still get the kids to bed at a reasonable hour); 4. Must be located near home; and, 5. The cuisine cannot trigger Zelda’s nut allergies.

Well, stop your laughing, because we found that restaurant tonight! El Francés, on the corner of Thames and Gorriti (the address is Gorriti 5099). For a reasonable price we found a nice selection of dinner treats that were beautifully presented. I quite enjoyed my chicken stuffed with mushrooms and gruyere with a side of squash risotto. Their baby salad greens were both lovely and tasty (being vegetable-deprived, we all gobbled those down).

But, without a doubt, the show-stopper of the meal was the mint lemonade-limeade slushy made with a scoop of lemon sorbet — WOW! Totally addictive, not too sweet, and absolutely amazing.

Photo courtesy of Óleo, Guía de Restaurantes

Note for readers: Another post by Tom. As a general rule, you’ll find that all alcohol-related posts are authored by Tom.

It’s hard work tasting wine in Mendoza. You’ve got to hire a driver or rent a car so you can wander from vineyard to vineyard. At each tasting room, you can only sample a single winemaker’s output. And, if you’re joined by two children, how many wineries can you really visit before the little people begin to mutiny?

Luckily, Ian and I discovered that there’s a better way: The Vines of Mendoza Tasting Room. It’s a beautiful room located right in the heart of downtown Mendoza, and it offers a comprehensive menu of wines from almost every winery in Mendoza. All of which you can enjoy in its courtyard underneath a canopy of vines, or at its elegant bar, or perhaps in one of its private salons, which is where Ian and I found ourselves.

Since the experience of tasting wine in a private salon couldn’t possibly be snooty enough, and since I have next to no knowledge of the vintner’s art, we clearly needed a guide. Someone who could accompany us on our sensory exploration of three emblematic wines of Argentina. Someone who could teach us how to savor a wine, understand it, and appreciate it.

Which explains why there is a wine glass full of dirt in the accompanying photo. And others with jam, and mushrooms, and various fruits. Fully appreciating the wine involves identifying the various scents and tastes that give each wine it’s unique character. So, we used these glasses to give us a vocabulary of scents, so we could single out the plumminess of one wine, the hints of tobacco in another, and the citrusy goodness of a third.

Sounds simple in theory, but I quickly discovered that it’s much, much more difficult in practice. Our guide taught us the five alliterative steps to taste a wine: see, sniff, swirl, sip, summarize. But, most of our time was spent sniffing a wine, and then sniffing the various scent glasses to to try to figure out what we were smelling in the wine. Is that dried mushroom I smell? Chocolate? Definitely not lemon. But…something fruity…Cherry? Strawberry?

I would consider my choices. Ian would mull over his choices. And, once we had reached our final conclusions about a particular wine, we would reveal our choices…and discover that we completely disagreed. If I smelled raspberry, he sensed tobacco. If I thought lemon, he chose ginger.

Clearly, improving my scent vocabulary is going to require a lifetime of smelling…and sadly, a lot more drinking as well.

We only took one tour of a winery while in Mendoza, and boy was it memorable!

We chose to visit a very small boutique winery owned by Carmelo Patti (he is a local celebrity). His small one-man winery is usually mobbed with tourists, so we were lucky to have him all to ourselves because it was late in the afternoon on New Year’s Eve.

Carmelo’s grandfather made wine for the family in Siciliy, and his father did the same when they moved to Mendoza, Argentina. Carmelo went into the trade professionally and has been a winemaker for some 47 years, in one fashion or another.

As we were deep in the warehouse with Mr. Patti, a tremendously powerful thunderstorm hit and due to a clogged gutter, Mr. Patti’s tasting room began to flood badly. It was raining from the ceiling and pouring out the door like a raging stream. His paperwork and memorabilia were sopping, his giant ancient leather guestbook was soaked, the power went out, and the place was trashed.

Carmelo climbed a rickety ladder to the roof to unclog the gutter. We dropped everything and went into action. The girls worked the squeegees in the tasting room with Ian. Tom and I rescued paperwork, set it out to dry, and began blotting the ancient book. It was crazy.

Not surprisingly, the Zs thought it was the coolest wine tour ever!