Today, it’s a battle royale, the Occident vs the Orient. Old School. It’s almost as exciting as the infamous Chuck Norris versus Bruce Lee fight. Almost.

Let’s start in the Western hemisphere, and the 41st outing of the Roving Ravenous Horde. One of the gang suggested a spot he’d “It’s pretty cool, saw it on tv then went today. Rabbit also on menu. I had big sardines and an awesome picada. Quality and reasonable prices and a real lived in porteño ambience”, and “galacian resto since 1950 lots of cool unique dishes in a real porteño setting. They have frog and beef tail among many other cool dishes…”. Then, he didn’t come when I slapped it on the roster for the next week. #sad #bad #lockhimup

But, a trio of us made our way for lunch this last week at Miramar, Av. San Juan 1999, San Crístobal.

Definitely old school ambiance. Really cute boy behind the counter, but I couldn’t get a good photo of him to add to the view. He kept moving and ducking behind things – I wasn’t going to chase him around, he clearly didn’t want to be in the picture.

I mean, this is really traditional Argentine-Spanish fare – one of our number selected the lengua a la vinagreta – the tender as could be sliced tongue in a very garlicky vinegar dressing (130 pesos), and I picked the caracoles, or snails (220 pesos), which turned out to be in an excellent tomato and onion sauce. Our third wasn’t having either of these oddities, and opted for…

…a plate of quite good smoked salmon with capers (280 pesos). Not so traditional, but tasty nonetheless.

I was all set to order the place’s famed rabo de toro, braised oxtail, which the waiter pimped for enthusiastically as the best dish on the menu, until I spotted…

…that they had a special of the day of venison ravioli. He opined that they, too, were excellent, and in fact so good that the waiters and cooks were back in the kitchen sneaking extras whenever people ordered them. And, he was right – huge, plump ravioli filled with well spiced venison, in a creamy venison and mushroom reduction sauce. (270 pesos)

Our salmon eater decided to stay with salmon, and went with nearly as good as the above, salmon filled squid-ink ravioli with fresh prawns, in a cream sauce. (390 pesos)

And, our third, decided on the lechon, suckling pig, which was falling apart tender, and absolutely delicious. It could have used something to go with it – but this is old school, you have to order your side dishes separately. (320 pesos)

It’s not cheap, though not ridiculous – still, maybe a touch more than I’d expect in an old school bodegón, even with today’s prices. Add in a cubierto charge (35 pesos each), a single shared bottle of water, a bottle of wine, and three coffees, and we racked up a 2285 peso tab, plus tip (we rounded to 850 pesos apiece), or about $66, $22 each, for 3 people. They do take credit and debit cards, a nice plus for this type of place, where many of them don’t. And I do want to go back and try the oxtail!

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Shooting across to the Eastern hemisphere… one of the things that’s been interesting to see over the last couple of years is the opening of Chinese restaurants that aren’t overly “westernized”. No more eggrolls or gloopy sweet and sour or fortune cookies, which have little or nothing to do with traditional Chinese cooking. We’ve seen the reopening and streamlining of Cinco Corderos, now out in Villa Urquiza; the reincarnation of Shi Yuan as Beijing, in Palermo, where they still offer the “white folk” menu, but on request, have the menu for “real” Chinese food (and, nicely translated into Spanish, thank you); downtown saw the arrival of Jing Yue last year, where about 2/3 of the menu is translated, but there’s more available, and if the kids of the owners are there, they’ll translate for you; the dumpling masters of Xiao Long Bao, who also produce some amazing other dishes in Once; and then this year, the opening of the cavernous Caracól de Amor near the Congreso, my recently touted new favorite, where the menu is virtually all in Chinese, but with pictures, and a chef-owner fluent in Spanish who can offer guidance.

Recently I heard about two more spots that have opened in the last few months, where the intent is to stick with a much more traditional Chinese menu. I met up with one of the Horde gang for dinner at Old Beijing, Esmeralda 877, downtown. There’s no picture of the place – it’s about as bare bones as you can get – a narrow space, undecorated other than by some plastic flowers and a single hanging Chinese lantern, and the half dozen tables barely fitting in the room.

The menu – all Chinese. [Edit: I now have a translation of the menu, I can’t reproduce it here, but if anyone wants it, send me an email – it will be the menu pictured – obviously if they make changes, they make changes.] No pictures. Nada. There seems to be an older couple who run the place, who between them appear to know maybe a dozen words of Spanish, mostly related to bringing you your bill and saying thank you. When we arrived, there was a young man attending the dining room, who spoke fluent Spanish, and Chinese, and a young woman in the back, who only spoke Spanish. After a bit of back and forth with the waiter (initially he just offered us fried rice or stir fried noodles), that required pulling out the names of some favorite dishes from the recesses of our minds, we settled on a trio of things. He stayed long enough to prepare one of the dishes, and then left with the young woman, leaving us, and the other two non-Chinese folk in the room, with no one from the restaurant to communicate with. [Closed up after only a few months – hey, next time, translate your menu for the people in the ‘hood!]

As you can see, the menu’s not that extensive, and much of what’s in the middle column is beverages. A couple of things stood out, but mostly because of the rumors I’d heard about what the place offered. I’d heard they had great Chinese pancakes. I have to admit, I was thinking about the little scallion pancakes, as an appetizer, but then the waiter fired up a disc grill in the front window, where it quickly became apparent he was preparing jian bing, the classic street breakfast originally from northeast China. (I’ve got a video of one being prepared at a place in NYC.) It’s basically a multi-flour and egg crepe stuffed with, stuff. This one seemed to be a mix of bacon, prosciutto, egg, and some different condiments, plus green onions. It was big. It was certainly more than we were prepared for. It was good.

One of the dishes we’d asked about was a spicy pork dish, the classic “twice-cooked pork belly”, which they didn’t have, but they did have Yu Xiang pork. I’m always a little cautious about this one because sometimes it’s done as a sweet and spicy dish and gets too sweet. But, he assured us it wasn’t, and, he was right. A decent kick to it, and absolutely delicious.

And, I’d heard they offer zha jiang mien, black bean noodles, and they do, and they serve it traditionally, with the components – the noodles, some cucumber, and the jelly-like black bean sauce, separately, for diners to mix in the proportions they like. It was my dining companion’s first experience with these, and he had some trepidation when he saw the sauce, but once it was all mixed together, we both ravenously ate our way to pretty much the bottom of the bowl.

On the beverage side, it’s slim pickings – with basically Coke, and Quilmes beer (regular or stout), all in cans, or water in small bottles. We liked the food, but have to admit, it kind of grinds to a halt there. The lack of ambiance, the lack of interest in local customers (given that the waiter, who’s obviously part of the family, or a close friend, speaks both languages, he could easily translate the menu for the place, and also be more amenable to offering dishes beyond the basics to non-Chinese folk), and, that it’s not cheap – the three dishes above, plus two beers, and a tip, ran us 1000 pesos, or about $26. That’s not expensive, or outrageous, but it’s a bit more than we expected… though partially that’s probably because the jian bing came in at the price of a full main course rather than an appetizer – we would have been just fine with two of those three dishes, which would have cut the bill by 25%.

I still recommend it – I don’t think there’s anyone else here offering jian bing or zha jiang mien, and it would be worth it to drop in for lunch or an early dinner (they close at 10, I think), and just have one of those (and there may be some other gems on that menu, but I’m not sure I’m going to go to the effort to try to translate it). And, with Jing Yue being only three blocks away and offering a wider array of dishes, and a friendlier atmosphere, I’m more likely to go there.