Outings, outings, outings. The Horde rides again! That’s Roving Ravenous Horde for those who aren’t keeping up. A couple of new spots we’ve been to on some recent, lovely afternoons.
This one came to my attention serendipitously. I was on the 108 bus, going to or coming from somewhere, and just saw it in passing, looked it up, and their Instagram feed looked interesting, and so, why not? Alegra Restaurante y Vineria, Olleros 3891, Chacarita is the place. We nabbed that table right there in front and set out to explore what they had to offer in the world of food, and wine.
First off, that “and wine” is all important, because this place doubles as a wine shop. And, one of the more interesting shops I’ve been in, with a real “boutique”, curated feel to the selections. This is not a place to find your commercial brand Malbecs and Chardonnays, they’ve got producers I’ve never heard of, and grape varieties I didn’t know were grown in Argentina, like this Teroldego from Alma Gemela, one of my favorite producers, a grape variety from the Sud-Tirol, in northeaster Italy. In fact, it might be the only Teroldego I’ve ever seen from outside that region. 1300 pesos.
We started off with a selection from their appetizers – basically things to nibble on, with two different kinds of mini-empanadas, one stuffed with caramelized onions and goat cheese, the other with kale and blue cheese (yum, the latter, we were all surprised how good that combination was), some morcilla croquettes served with an apple chutney, and lovely saffron arancini stuffed with prosciutto and cheese. Each plate ran between 450-500 pesos.
For our main courses, we ranged across the menu. A chipanesa was a delicious sandwich of a veal milanesa served on a large, sandwich roll sized chipa, the yuca flour and cheese bread that I’ve talked about many a time in the past. Delicate and well seasoned squash and mascarpone ravioli were tossed with sautéed mushrooms and “AVOE”, the Spanish version of “EVOO”, or extra virgin olive oil, and a medallion of pork shoulder was braised in wine and orange and served with sweet potaotes under a salad of lightly pickled radishes. All absolutely delicious. The one disappointment was the rump steak – asked for “rare”, it came out so thin and overcooked it was dry and chewy, and the accompanying “tomato tarte tatin” was no such thing, being an oil soaked, undercooked, and dense puck of dough with some sugary roasted tomato slices atop. Unfortunately, that was my dish, and I ate a couple of bites of the steak, one of the tarte, and then just ate my salad. The waiter noticed, asked, I told him, and he thanked me for the input, but that was as far as it went. Kind of disappointing response. Still, other than one dish failure, everything else was spot on and absolutely delicious, and his service other than that was friendly and informative. Main courses ran between 750-950 pesos each. Would we go back? Yes.
Cang Tin, Dorrego 2415, Palermo. Nestled into a weird little dead-end street, to the side of the Ministro Carranza train station and at the base of the pedestrian crossover, is this new Vietnamese and Thai (much more the former) spot that I gather comes to us from the owners of the two branches of Saigon Noodle Bar, in San Telmo and downtown. It’s got to be one of the stranger spots I’ve seen as a restaurant. It’s also the ground floor commercial space in an apartment building, another sort of oddity. I forgot to take a picture of the location, so you’ll have to make do with one of a pitcher of freshly made cardamom and ginger spiced iced tea, and the colorful tinware place settings.
We pretty much went all appetizers, starting with the highly recommended sweet potato dumplings with a mildly spicy dipping sauce, which our waiter opined were even better than the pork filled ones (which also turned out not to exist, as we later found out the “omnivore” dumplings of the week were actually chicken filled). 450 pesos.
Next up, classic nem, fried springrolls, also chicken, and served up with all the appropriate accompaniments, including a really great fish sauce based dip. We did ask for hot sauce on the side, they offer up a sriracha which appeared to be homemade, but I did see bottles of the classic “rooster” sriracha in house, so I think they’re just filling up small bottles from those, and a spicier green chili sauce. 500 pesos.
The five-spice braised pork ribs were good, but no more than that. A bit too fatty, and not enough spice, plus they really could have used being browned a bit. Reasonably tasty, but I probably wouldn’t order them again. And a little steep for just 3 ribs at 710 pesos.
An exceptionally good banh xeo, the classic rice flour and coconut milk pancake, stuffed with sprouts and mushrooms and the option of adding in prawns (which turned out to be maybe six small prawns for 100 pesos extra) or pork. And huge for an appetizer, it could be a meal for one. They also brought an even spicier hot sauce, and a small dish of kimchi (an odd, non-Vietnamese nor Thai offering on the menu, and which we were told was classic cabbage kimchi but turned out to be a good, but not great, daikon kimchi). 690 pesos plus the 100 extra for the prawns, and 140 for the kimchi.
And, nearly full, we decided to just split one last dish, one of the noodle dishes, and went with the waiter’s recommendation of the Drunken Noodles, pad kee mao over a classic pad thai, which he opined wasn’t near as good. And this was the stunner of the day, certainly my favorite, with spicy, slurpy noodles, chicken, thai basil, vegetables and chilies. 790 pesos.
Excellent all around, and we were all in our happy place, just surprised to find it at the bottom of a train station’s pedestrian walkway.
The Horde may be, temporarily, winding down. Over the last couple of months we’ve lost a couple of folk to temporary moves back to the US, with another one shortly headed to the UK for a potentially longer stay. With several of our past members still avoiding going out, it’s looking like in another two weeks there will just be a trio of us, not quite the “horde” that we hope to be. That may pick up again as people get vaccinated here (it’s a really slow, lagging process in Argentina, we’ve just hit around 12-13% of the population having gotten a first dose, and a mere 5% second doses (with few second doses to be had). Assuming the quality control checks come back fine from Moscow, Argentina is setup to start producing a licensed version of the Sputnik V vaccine doses sometime in June at the rate of about 1 million per month of first and second doses combined, plus they just contracted to buy 20-30 million more doses direct.
