Well, I suppose, Gustu, like Söder, coming from that same “New Nordic” background and influence, fit into the “this is the kind of food that…” category I mentioned early in the post. Given that in many ways, despite being different ingredients in different hands, my experiences had a lot of similarities, it may simply be a part of that whole “movement”. It’s interesting, looking back at both reviews now, I had virtually the same reaction to the rooms, albeit decorated completely differently, similar thoughts about the staff (though at least at Gustu they knew what they were serving) and pairings, and quite similar thoughts about the food served. I liked the results at Gustu more than I did at Söder, but much of it was intellectually more than gustatorily satisfying.

As I’m thinking more about this place and some of the dishes, and I suppose in some ways, that’s a testament to why I don’t think of it as a negative experience, a week later, what occurs to me is that part of the whole Nordic movement is the use of very local products in new and surprising ways – which there’s no question that Gustu’s chef did. If I think about the ingredients used at Söder, many of them were not local, and felt, and maybe more in retrospect, feel, like they were being forced onto the plate – spirulina, those odd evergreen branches, bonito, black rice, ají amarillo, kale, pink peppercorns – all relatively recent imports, but not really what one would think of as local Argentine ingredients. I guess if I were to hold up a sign and point at any real negative, it might be that – I think in the back of my mind I was hoping to see some really creative and interesting dishes using the ingredients of everyday cuisine here in Argentina, the way they did with Bolivian ingredients at Gustu. Or the way, say, the chefs at Tarquino, Aramburu, or even Tegui, are doing.

This blog post led me to your 2013 post about Gustu, which really had my interested piqued after reading the New Yorker article about that place over lunch (agua de jamaica, green salad, lentil soup, setas veracruzana with arroz integral and huitlacoche for $60 MXN). Now I’m not as thrilled about the place as I’d hoped I would be.

It was expensive, but no more so than any other high end restaurant in town these days (remember, even with the wine pairing, totalling to 900 pesos means that the dinner was basically $70 with tip, for 13 courses and 6 wines. And I only disliked two of the courses – the fish and the ravioli, and really liked three of them, leaving another eight that were interesting but not either wow or awful, falling basically in the “that was okay” category. I’ve had better, I’ve had worse, in the same price range here. I will say that all of the places I ate at in Mexico back in March that were in that range were far better! 😉