The Second Roll of the Meatballs

In which I keep the meatballs rolling in, and look back at a couple

It’s full steam ahead in the meatball world. In the first post, I introduced the world of local meatballs and covered a range of styles. I talked about the local preference for pairing them with mashed potatoes or rice, and in this post, I’ve picked a few past good spots along with some new ones for that approach. As well, I have to have a few that are plopped atop a bowl of pasta, because, well, just because.

Let’s start with the pasta ones.

Many, many moons ago, seventeen years ago in fact, I discovered the original Salgado’s, in Villa Crespo, and it’s remained a go-to spot for great pastas over the years. Recently, they opened a new spot in Palermo Chico, at Cabello 3401, corner of Paunero. It’s much more spacious and modern than the original, and there’s no pasta store as part of it.

Here, the meatballs are offered up with huge, double scrolled fusilli - to me they look a bit more like long casarecce, but hey, it’s their menu. They go for a Buenos Aires classic for the sauce - or really double sauce - what’s called tuco y pesto here. A tomato based sauce plus pesto. Looking back at my post from seventeen years ago, I’m pleased to see that they’ve really embraced the fresh pesto concept - something they were among the few to even attempt back in the day. Also noting that they were doing the tuco-pesto back then as well. I’d forgotten.

Two small meatballs feels a bit of a meager offering for the size of this plate, but they are delicious, as is, somehow once again, the two-sauce combination. There’s a bit too much of it, but I will survive. The pasta, no surprise, is cooked perfectly. It’s certainly a meatball dish I’d happily eat again, but doesn’t quite make it into my top three. 13500 pesos, about $10.50.

Cantina Don Chicho has been one of my favorite pasta places in the city since someone first sent me off there more than eighteen years ago. It’s a bit of a lengthy trip to get to, but being the freshly made pasta fiend that I am, a place that has the staff literally making the pasta to order, at two tables by the entrance, just grabs me the right way. For awhile, they had a location in Palermo, but now they’re back to only the original spot at Plaza 1411 in Villa Ortuzár.

Now, I’m a little miffed at my waiter. I don’t know if he was taking advantage of someone he thought didn’t know, or simply misunderstood me. I know I misunderstood the menu. You pick your pasta (five options) - I went with the fusilli - and then you pick your sauce (eleven options). I picked scarparo, basically a classic tomato sauce with the addition of some chili and extra garlic. Now, off on the next page there’s an listing of side dishes, one of which is meatballs. I took it to mean that they added meatballs to whichever sauce you ordered. Turns out the meatballs come in their own, basic pomodoro sauce. They’re available two or four, my waiter suggest that they were fairly small and I’d likely want four. Again, either taking advantage, or maybe it’s just that’s the quantity he likes to eat.

This does give me an idea for a post - the different Argentine classic pasta sauces that you find at old-school restaurants here. They’re not the same as the ones we’d typically find at Italian restaurants in either the US or in Italy.

Needless to say, way too much sauce between the two plates, and while I gamely made my way through everything it really was too much. Then again, it was really good. Their scarparo sauce is one of the best I’ve had here. The meatballs aren’t bad either. But in retrospect, I’d have ordered the pasta plain and just gotten two meatballs in sauce (they’re not “fairly small”), and maybe asked for some chili flakes on the side. As the woman at the next table over did shortly after. It would have cut the price from 16500 pesos ($13) to 9500 pesos ($7.50), and I’d have been thoroughly happy, and sufficiently full.

And, finally, on the pastas, I go high end. I’m at Aldo’s Restaurante, Arévalo 2032, Palermo. A great restaurant, standing out particularly for the availability of a selection of wines by the glass (Aldo is one of the city’s better sommeliers), and then, always, really good food. So what’s the meatball entry here? The pasta is monikered cuerda de guitarra, or guitar string, which I’ve always found an odd Spanish naming of this pasta. In Italian, it’s spaghetti or linguini “a la chitarra”, indicating it’s been made on a pasta “guitar”, not that the pasta itself is the guitar strings, but that it’s cut using them. This is mine….

But, back to the dish. It’s a decent portion of linguini, in a vibrant, bright pomodoro sauce, and while the meatballs, the polpettine (optional on the pasta) are small, as is typical in classic Italian cooking, there are eight of them, which is plenty. And, they’re stunningly good. Oddly, they’re not browned on the outside, they appear to have probably been simmered in broth. I think a light browning would add to the dish. I’d give the edge here to my favorite from last time at Cosi mi Piace, mostly for the fantastic fusilli, but really close. As noted, these are a little pricier, coming in at 17000 pesos, or $13.50, but… they also have a 3300 cubierto charge per person, upping that to $16 in practice. Still, worth it, and the overall experience at Aldo’s is at a higher level than at the other. Tough call. Maybe a future pasta dish in round three will outshine both?

On to the Argentine classic, the albóndigas con puré, meatballs with sauce and mashed potatoes!

Okay, this one wasn’t on any list. I was over in the Congreso neighborhood for other reasons, was hungry, and happened to be walking by this place, Los Segovias, Av. Entre Rios 166, and saw that they had meatballs on the menu. And, one never knows. Sometimes a serendipitous hole-in-the-wall discovery is a winner. I would say, it would be difficult to design a darker, dingier bar and eatery, than this cramped spot, unless you truly set out to do so.

This is pretty much the classic dish. And it’s a pretty basic version. Perfectly edible, and filling, but nothing you’d run back for. The meatballs themselves weren’t bad, and nicely seasoned. The tomato sauce was probably out of a can or jar. The mashed potatoes are, at a guess, made with some butter, salt, and… water, rather than milk. You can pretty much tell when you look at them in person, and the taste confirms it. Basic fare, basic price, at a mere 4200 pesos, about $3.25. Might be the cheapest lunch I’ve had outside of home in a year.

Bringing back two others in the same style, a self-styled bodegón, which is sort of the case. A bodegón is typically an old school Argentine restaurant, more or less the local equivalent of a tavern. Usually dark, a lot of wood, a lot of kitsch, a lot of memorabilia, ofttimes sports related. As I noted when I first went there, El Bodegón de la Calle Ayacucho, Ayacucho 449, Once, is relatively new, and was formerly a small neighborhood gym.

The handwritten, photocopied menu doesn’t change often, if at all, other than the prices. The meatballs are good, the tomato sauce is fine, the mashed potatoes are buttery and made with milk. And they’re only slightly more expensive than the spot above, coming in at 4800 pesos, or about $3.75.

And finishing up this round with what, fair notice, are my favorite non-pasta meatballs in the city to date, Cantina Rondinella, Av. Álvarez Thomas 12 in Chacarita.

This dish, on the menu, is simply titled cuccoliccio en estofado, and are tomato stewed meatballs - available spicy or non-spicy (the former is better, and actually has a kick). My notes at the time I first tried these:

Oddly, not identified as meatballs on the menu, the dish is called cuccoliccio, and is one of the chef’s suggestions. We had to ask, as I couldn’t find anything on a quick internet search, only to be told “that’s the Italian word for meatballs”. No, no it’s not (it’s polpette).

As best I can tell, just going off on a dive, there was a comic actor, Antonio Cuccoliccio, in the late 1800s, who made a living doing sketches in a weird, combined Italian and Spanish dialect, that came to be known as cocoliche, still identified as a slang way of speaking. There is no other reference I could find to the word (which sort of translates to “cuckoo high school”) or to its use referring to meatballs. I can only guess that the owner and/or chef, thought it would be a cute, attention grabbing name for dish that could be an Italian Spanish mashup.

The meatballs are just plain fantastic, the sauce is spicy and rich, the mashed potatoes loaded with butter and creamy with milk. I don’t have the current price, but as of last visit, it was the equivalent of roughly $9. A bargain for a plate this good.

Another half dozen down. Current leaders of the pack…

With pasta - Cosi Mi Piace, Aldo’s a close second, Cantina Don Chicho third

With mash - Cantina Rondinella, El Rincón a not so close second, Dona third