Sushi, Tempura, Dumplings. These are a few of my favorite things. Okay, there’s only one tempura item in this Bite Marks-ish, or Chop Suey-ish roundup, but it works for the title, so I’m going with it.
Let’s start along Pasaje Echevarria. Those of us who spend a lot of time in Chinatown know that there have been little hole in the wall restaurants behind the train station (north side of that diagonal railroad track) for years. And, over the last couple of years, the offerings have been upgrade, modernized, replaced, and modified. Basically both underneath the now elevated rail line, and alongside it, there are more than a dozen spots to get takeout, and sit along a concrete wall to eat. A few places have standup seating, and there are a couple of actual restaurants underneath the station now as well. It’s also been evident that extensions were planned, and recently, the next block to the northwest, between Juramento and Mendoza, opened up with around twenty new spots to eat. I can also see that the passageway is being renovated a further block in both directions – so soon, there will be a four block stretch of casual eats kind of places. Unlike the main strips of Barrio Chino, these are not all Chinese, or even Asian – there’s a wide mix of cuisines – basically an outdoor food hall.
First off, the new block has two dedicated dumpling spots, so not a surprise that I zeroed in on those right off the bat. At Fubao, close to the Juramento end of the block, things are a bit formulaic. You pick from a choice of what are basically either gyoza or wontons, choice of either pork and cabbage, pork and chive, or vegetarian filling, choose whether you want them boiled or fried, and choose one of half a dozen sauces to accompany. I went with pork and chive gyoza, boiled (though they came out fried), with a sweet chili sauce (disappointingly, this was the only thing close to a hot sauce on offer); and fried pork and cabbage wontons with an oyster sauce mayo.
The dumplings both taste and look very… commercial. And, it turns out that Fubao has a nearby store where they sell frozen dumplings to both the public and restaurants. So pretty much, they’re just dumping frozen dumplings into the fryer or water pot, sticking them atop some shredded cabbage and carrots, and squirting a bunch of sauce over the top (I envisioned it as a side, dipping sauce, but they coat the salad and dumplings pretty liberally. The dumplings themselves are fine, but nothing special, and the two sauces I tried were the same. Pretty much a meh. I think the gyoza ran 1600 for six and the wontons 1500 for six, basically $3.25 and $3.
On the other hand, redeeming the grazing lunch completely, there’s Dumpling Pong, closer to Mendoza, where they’re making the dumplings on the spot, and they have a half dozen types of them on offer. Here I went with classic pork potstickers, which turned out to be cooked with a good drizzle of batter that connects them, a traditional approach, and fish dumplings. While they both come with a sort of basic green onion and soy, sesame kind of sauce, there are a couple of different hot sauces on offer to drizzle and dip to your heart’s content. These dumplings are excellent, some of the better ones I’ve had in Barrio Chino – I will happily return time and again.
Both places, by the way, have seating – Fubao has metal folding tables and chairs set-up along the wall in front of them, while Pong offers both low plastic tables and stools, plus several seats fronting the kitchen. Prices varied for different dumplings, but all in the 1500-1800 range, so $3-3.75.
Edit: A revisit and the dumplings were very different, and no one was making them. When asked, we found out that they’re both making them elsewhere in larger quantity, and then, perhaps, freezing them until used, though that’s not clear, but they’ve also eliminated the nice touches like different shapes – they’re now all just ordinary potsticker shaped, and they don’t get things like the batter cooking method or the same garnishes. Still good, but a bit more of a yawn.
Staying in Belgrano, but outside of Chinatown, I headed one afternoon to Bajo Belgrano, where there’s a lovely plaza fronted by numerous well known restaurants along Sucre – the eponymous Sucre, Narda Comedor, Páru come to mind immediately (the last is actually a block off the plaza). There have been, over the years, many a foray out there to eat at one or another location. Taking over Bruni, which closed up during the pandemic, is Kona Corner, Castañeda 1899, at the corner of Sucre. Touted by quite a few as some of the better Japanese food around, I thought I’d give it a try. What I didn’t know was that at lunch, the sushi bar basically isn’t open, nor, in a way, is the kitchen. They only have on offer a trio of “sets” – a daily stir fry, a fish of the day, or a sushi combo. Each comes accompanied by a small salad, some pickled carrots and daikon, some marinated cucumber, and a cup of miso soup.
I went with the sushi set, which arrives with a thirteen piece mix of mostly a few pieces of four different rolls, and a trio of nigiri. First off, all the accompaniments are good. No wows, but good. The fish is fresh, though the rice is kind of flavorless. The rolls were kind of basic – salmon and avocado, white fish (unidentified, and no one seemed to know) and avocado, same white fish and green onion, and a different salmon and avocado (one had seaweed outside, one didn’t). The nigiri were white fish, salmon, and prawn. It was all… fine… but uninteresting. The sushi set runs, currently 6800 pesos, or about $14, the two cooked dish sets are 6000, or $12.5o. They have a nice selection of wine, including some decent ones by the glass. Sake is limited to a few small bottles and rather pricey. The evening menu, with a fully open sushi bar and kitchen, looks to be far more interesting. Perhaps, one eve in the future.
This is one that I’ve anticipated getting to for awhile. I mentioned it back during my run of omakase bars last year. Well known sushi chef Juan Matsuoka, is behind the sushi bar Nozomi in the Mercado de los Carruajes, and I mentioned when I reviewed that that he was opening an izakaya restaurant out in Villa Ortuzar, Yujin Izakaya. At some point the focus must have changed, as it’s now known as Yujin Sushi Bar, Av. Álvarez Thomas 1428, though still offers both sushi and cooked dishes. So, I went in with high expectations for both quality and the general style of sushi and experience.
Disappointingly, it doesn’t live up to either. First off, despite the inviting look out front, inside it’s very industrial feeling inside, there’s no warmth at all. Lots of metal and gleaming polished wood, and customer comfort was clearly not factored in. The chairs versus both table and sushi bar, and even the barstools in front of the regular bar, are so low that, well, if I had tits they’d have been under, not over the counter. I’m short, I realize that, but basically the countertop at the sushi bar was maybe 2″ below my shoulders. And, the chairs are all hard metal. There’s a TV screen mounted over the sushi bar, blasting out late 70s and early 80s rock, which I appreciate in many settings, just not here. The two sushi chefs basically don’t interact with customers. Questions are answered perfunctorily, with a deer caught in headlights look, and waitstaff run over to divert your attention to themselves.
There is no omakase offering, at least not the type of plate by plate experience – there is a 25 piece omakase combo, but having looked at the menu and seen the number of rolls featuring cream cheese in them, I decided against that. After making short work of two small strips of tempura zucchini offered up as “today’s free appetizer” I ordered the 8-piece nigiri moriawase, which was described as eight varieties of white fish, salmon, and prawns. What arrived were two each of salmon, white fish (chernia, a type of stone bass), prawns (in Peruvian anticuchuo marinade), and omelet. I must say I was expecting both more variety, and, an omelet, regardless of how well made, is not a fish, and feels like a bit of a cheat, especially at the 5500 pesos ($11.25) price tag.
Rarely seen at sushi bars here, they were offering uni, sea urchin sashimi or gunkan. I thought I’d go with the former, which arrived as a long desiccated sea urchin shell filled with dried out lettuce leaves and three little wispy bits of sea urchin that almost looked like someone had taken a single sea urchin sac and cut it into strips. For 1600 pesos, or $3.25. Certainly more than you’d pay for that quantity in New York restaurants, and its domestic, Patagonia, sea urchin, it’s not like they’re flying it in from Japan. A quartet each (the smallest quantity they offer of their various nigiri), of salmon skin – soft and chewy, not crisp; and glazed eel – refrigerator cold, no, no, no, it should be served warm, or it’s kind of like eating congealed fat, clock in, respectively, at 2750 and 5200 pesos – $5.50 and $10.75, and neither of them would be on my list to order again. In fact, really, none of this would be on my list.
I can’t really answer as to why I proceeded on to dessert – maybe to get the taste of that congealed fat off of my tongue. The ice tempura was purported to be a deep fried tempura battered vanilla ice cream with coffee sauce. I love a good fried ice cream – with that crispy, hot outside surrounding a ball of ice cream. This was not that. It was a tube of vanilla sponge cake that had been, perhaps, ladled over with some boiling oil to give it a slightly crispy sheen on one side, wrapped around a forgettable sugary vanilla ice cream, and drizzled with a more sugary sauce that only tasted of coffee in the way that watered down Sanka tastes of coffee. This only succeeded in erasing the eel’s assault by coating my palate with way too much sugar.
Add in the cost of a small flask of sake, and this mediocre selection of sushi easily cost between 50-100% more than the good omakase spots in town, all of which are closer to home, and all of which are far, far better. Including Nozomi.
So, out of a quartet of spots covered, I recommend Dumpling Pong. The rest, fuhgeddaboudit.
