Comments on: Grazing at the New Year https://www.saltshaker.net/20230111/grazing-at-the-new-year Casting a little flavor (and a few aspersions) on the world of food, drink, and life Sat, 04 Feb 2023 14:03:27 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.1 By: Dan Perlman https://www.saltshaker.net/20230111/grazing-at-the-new-year#comment-271449 Sat, 14 Jan 2023 12:16:09 +0000 https://www.saltshaker.net/?p=35958#comment-271449 Hmm… just a couple of days later and a revisit to Chuí. I’d waxed poetic enough about those butterbeans that Henry wanted to try them. So we decided to go there for our “date night”. What a different experience. A bit more packed than it had been at lunch, and reservations were clearly necessary (which we had). Pounding music, at the level that made the tables shake constantly. Service was borderline rude, and not just from our main waiter, but pretty much everyone who showed up at the table, serving, clearing, whatever.

I don’t have photos because, date night, and so I don’t tend to take them, but even Henry agreed I should have taken one of the butterbean dish. While it was as tasty as it had been two days before, in contrast to that generous heap of beans on the plate, the beans barely covered half the dish this time – it almost looked like leftovers from some other table after they’d eaten half. On the positive side, great focaccia and a dish of babaganoush was delicious, albeit rather small. The mushroom paté on the other hand looked like someone had the runs and deposited them on a plate. A paté should be basically solid, not a pool of near liquid, and it’d be so easy to do that and make it look appetizing. Plus, it just wasn’t very good, very sour and unpleasant.

While those plates, all cold ones, arrived in timely fashion, the one larger hot dish we ordered to split, the papas annas, took an hour and a quarter to make it to the table, just tossed on the table without explanation or apology.

Honestly, I’d been thinking that this might be a candidate for one of my top five for vegetarian food in town, but now, I’m not so sure. If the experience can be that hit and miss, for the moment, all I can say is “cautiously recommended”.

]]> By: Expensive Theatrics – SaltShaker https://www.saltshaker.net/20230111/grazing-at-the-new-year#comment-271436 Wed, 11 Jan 2023 14:34:18 +0000 https://www.saltshaker.net/?p=35958#comment-271436 […] And, in that same sort of vein, we found ourselves one lunch at Teatriz, Riobamba 1220, in Recoleta. Now, it’s not that huge spectacle that, say, Teatriz in Madrid is – but that’s over the top Philipe Starck. But, it’s definitely a large spot, with a huge window looking out on the street – a lovely building across the way, wonderful Roman columns, all behind security grating now, and turned into a fertilitiy clinic – fascinating watching people literally seeming to sneak in and out of the place, furtively glancing around hoping that no one has seem them enter or leave. But back to the restaurant, and it’s mix of white tablecloth draped tables with black and white harlequin pattern clothed chairs – a bit much on the eye, but at least they didn’t go for a riot of color, like, say, Le Cirque in New York. The crowd, clearly upscale, and leaning towards the older set – at least on the one afternoon we were there. The upscale is no doubt maintained, given that the prices are as well – in fact, as it turns out, Teatriz offered up easily the most expensive lunch I’ve ever eaten in Buenos Aires, a three course meal, with average priced wine, running us 100 pesos apiece. Admittedly, we ordered two of the more expensive main courses that we could have, but even had we not it would have run us 90, and could have run us 110… the menu, I gather, is the same at lunch and dinner, with appetizers and desserts that range from mid-teens to mid twenties, and main courses from high twenties to mid-forties. [Closed during the pandemic, replaced in 2022 with Social Paraiso Bistro] […]

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