Bite Marks #130
A little bit of this, a little bit of that. A pot, a pan, a broom, a hat.
Every city has its temples of gastronomy, but there are also those tiled in grease and lit by the flicker of neon. Bite Marks isn’t about Michelin stars, it’s about the crumbs stuck in your beard, the sauce stains on your shirt, and the holy moment when a forkful makes you forget the rent is due. Or at least that’s the hope. What do we have this time around? A lot of it ain’t pretty. Read on to see.
Prawn Tacos at the original Tea Connection, Uriburu 1597, Recoleta. When the first location of this now dozen and a half outpost chain opened up almost exactly nineteen years ago, I was there. After all, it’s at the corner from our house. And I do like tea. When one of the owners introduced himself, I scored an interview with him, and published what I think was the first review of the place, exactly nineteen years ago yesterday. We still pop in regularly, either for a tea or one of their fruit juice blends, and maybe a scone or something similar. Now and then, lunch. And on a recent visit, they were promoting their prawn tacos. I can’t say that I was expecting great justice to this Cal-Mex staple, but they did it proud. Fresh prawns, and a generous number of them, a light salad of cabbages, onions, and carrots, cilantro, limes, and hot sauce on the side. Even the wheat tortillas were decently made. Kudos! And at 23900 pesos, reasonably priced.
Lamas, Lafinur 3286, Palermo. Taking over the space recently vacated by Territorio Aura, which was on my list, but I never made it to, Lamas recently opened up offering Peruvian-Nikkei cooking in the heart of Palermo Chico. It’s a very pretty space.
The owner, if my info is correct, is Alfredo Sansone, also the owner of Puerta del Inca in Monserrat; and the chef is Ruben Ventura, about whom I couldn’t find any real history, though given that it appears a good number of the staff of the new place came in through the other restaurant, it’s possible he was there?
Service was lovely and attentive. But I’m going to have to ding the kitchen. We ordered. We waited. And waited. After nearly half an hour, our appetizer came out, with abject apologies from our waitress. The kitchen was apparently having trouble “keeping up with orders”… which doesn’t bode well, since there were no more than a dozen people in the place, and half of them were already eating.
I love a good papa rellena, and the menu’s offering of an esfera de papa seemed to promise some sort of modernist take on the dish. It, however, was pretty much a classic version, nothing special, though well made. We thought it lacked a bit of seasoning in the filling, and couldn’t quite understand the deep pool of some sort of mayo-ish sauce (especially as the menu states it’s served with a vinaigrette and salsa criolla). The sauce was not a plus. 10500 pesos.
And then we waited again. Almost forty minutes - to the point where we were ready to just cancel the order and leave. And honestly, we should have.
The lomo saltado likewise sort of missed the mark on seasoning. Nothing picante in this dish that would normally have a decent hit of chili heat, and just sort of a bland brown gravy. Quite good potatoes on the side. But, for 35000 pesos, we expected a hell of a lot more.
This, however, was an unmitigated disaster. A Picante de mariscos that was, first and foremost, not picante in the slightest. But then, it just went downhill from there. The fried shellfish was all way overcooked and rubbery, while the fillet of sole underneath was raw. I don’t mean undercooked, but it was like they’d gone for the fish equivalent of a blue steak, slapped it on a grill for 10 seconds on a side, and then put it on the plate - it was literally still refrigerator cold. We sent it back, and I’ll give them credit, they did the right thing - they comped the dish, along with our cocktails.
I also, as I tend to do, watched what was happening at other tables. And while I didn’t see anyone else send a plate back, I saw a lot of pushing food around with a fork and not finishing dishes.
I want to say the place has potential. The background credentials for running the restaurant are solid, the room is beautiful, the service and management are near impeccable. And the owner has to know that this food is not nearly on the same playing field as his other restaurant, but given the location, hype, and price, it ought to exceed it. I hope they fix whatever was going on in the kitchen. But I’m going to have to hear a lot of better thoughts about it before I venture back and crack the wallet for this one.
CHS Burger, Medrano 1046, Palermo. In the last Bite Marks I’d tried the relatively new outpost of this small chain (four locations) and hadn’t been impressed. But several people suggested I was being too hard on them, and that the burgers are really excellent. The place even got a video shoutout from YouTube influencer Mike Chen as, it came across, one of the best burgers he’d ever had. Methinks not. Then again, sorry Mike, but most of the places that whomever set up your tour in Buenos Aires directed you to as “the best of” just wasn’t. With few exceptions they were places struggling to survive that probably thought getting him to come there would give them a boost. I don’t know the setup he has in terms of whether he gets paid to go to places, or the PR companies do an then entice him, but someone did a really sucky job of introducing him to Buenos Aires.
Sorry, sidetracked there… I had just come from a doctor’s visit, was really, really hungry, and the original location for this chain was right by my bus stop. I figured I’d give it another try. And you know what? It’s not going to go into my top ten or anything, but it was leaps and bounds better than the one I had downtown. This time I didn’t order the Cheezy Reloaded burger, but the Chopper - just a simple burger with lettuce, tomato, and pickles.
First off, no wait while someone went shopping for ingredients, and second, the burger was cooked right and pretty darned good. It still had that slightly weird, almost chemical flavor, but this time it clicked that it tastes like “Liquid Smoke” seasoning, and they make a point of their smoke-flavored burgers, which I hadn’t seen on any signs in the downtown spot, but it was all over the place here. So, it was certainly at least recommendable, though for 25500 pesos, there are better options.
Las Petunias, Costa Rica 4600, Palermo. This place came recommended by a local expat friend, whose tastes in food are generally pretty good. So I added it to the list, and one day, when we were in the mood for “cheap and cheerful” steak, we headed over. Light, airy, and comfortable. Also open to the elements on two sides, which meant we had pigeons, other birds, and dogs wandering through the room at various points. Friendly service.
A decent goats milk provoleta, though the chewy flatbread seemed unnecessary, as did the arugula. Is it worth nearly 10000 pesos more than a cow’s milk provoleta? No. 23850 pesos.
And, we couldn’t decide on a steak to split, so we ended up ordering their Tres Carnes sampler platter, with shortribs, matambrito (pork flank), and lamb chops, accompanied by vegetable rice and a Caesar salad. Yawn. They were basically just okay, but clearly cheap cuts and not particularly high quality. The rice was inedible - undercooked and flavored with something unpleasant. The salad was the best thing on the platter. We didn’t finish it. 52393 pesos (why the weird numbers???)
We also, now in looking at the receipt, didn’t notice that we paid someone else’s bill, not ours, though the total ended up with us actually paying about 4000 pesos less than our bill should have been. Sorry to whomever got the bigger bill, hope you noticed before paying it. Regardless, to my expat friend… maybe we just ordered wrong, but there was nothing here to entice me to come back.
Uni Soju Bar, Thames 745 in the Mercat Villa Crespo. Apologies for the blue tinted photos - you should see the originals - we were seated next to a deep blue tinted glass window and I probably should have used a flash to compensate. I did the best with the basic photo manipulation program I’ve got. But then, you could just stop here and not even look, the food wasn’t worth ever thinking about again.
A bibimbap
A “spicy black bean noodles” that had no spice and virtually no black bean sauce. As a guess, it was made from an instant ramen pack.
And the much delayed boiled dumplings that tasted like they’d been simmering in soapy dishwater. So bad we sent them back. The owner came over and apologized, took them off the bill, and offered us a couple of iced coffees or teas on the house. She had tasted one and agreed there was something very wrong with them. My guess, they were bought-in frozen dumplings, maybe from a new brand she hadn’t tried before. She didn’t look happy.
And I think I’m going to stop there. This might have been the least successful round of Bite Marks of all 130 of them. Only one place I’d go back to, and it’s a longtime favorite anyway.
Ahhhh, bummer :(