“There once was this Zen master sitting on a small stone bench, studying his small Japanese rock garden… There are only five rocks in the master’s garden. Each was chosen for its individual perfection, as well as its unique relationship to the other stones. One day a visitor comes to the garden. The visitor steps slowly around the tiny space, contemplating the rake-grooved gravel and the stones. Eventually the visitor turns to the Zen master and exclaims, “It is perfect.” The Zen master shakes his head solemnly and says, “No, it will be perfect when there are only three stones.””

– Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia Outdoor Clothing

The room, outside of the view of the gardens (spectacular even if you don’t get the plum table in the corner), is typically minimalist in design, but very tranquil, casual feeling. On weekends, and we were there on Sunday, there’s a line out the door for lunch – though, it moves pretty quickly, a lot of folk apparently are just having a quick coffee or tea after strolling through the gardens rather than a full lunch.

“God gave man the challenge of raw materials — not the ease of finished things. He left the pictures unpainted and the music unsung and the problems unsolved, that man might know the joys and glories of creation.”

– unknown

New York City – In the previous review I mentioned that tasting the crudo plate at Scarpetta I realized I hadn’t had sushi once during my entire trip. That’s so… wrong. And so, for my last night in town, it was out to a favorite little neighborhood (East Village, where I used to live) sushi bar, Shima, 188 2nd Avenue, at 12th Street. I’ve mentioned the place before, so I’m not going to do a whole writeup, just share some final photos and then back to our regular Buenos Aires channel. The tango-dancing manager of the place greeted me by name and promised once again to visit us on his next BsAs trip (he didn’t on his last time in, he and his wife spent five days straight dancing tango). Chef Toshio Oguma, by the way, has moved on to a different restaurant, and his former assistant is now running the sushi bar at Shima. He remembered me and a little parade of dishes started up, just like I’d never been away. That’s how to run a restaurant. [fair warning – camera phone pix] [Closed]

And now, as noted, back to our regularly scheduled programming….

“We must be careful of those who are boxed in linear thought with linear solutions to complex problems if we are to propel the human race and continue the forward progression of mankind.”

– Lance Winslow, Author

Buenos Aires – Some time ago, I got a series of very angry e-mails and post commentaries from a reader, who I’m fairly certain no longer frequents these pages, but if he still does, so be it. He’s an American expat, living in Japan, and he has embraced Japanese tradition… or maybe that’s TRADITION… because he was so rabidly defensive of “how things should be”, that he could have been the poster boy (other than the fact that it seemed to have slipped his mind that he’s white and jewish) for the Japanese Ministry of Culture and their campaign to protect “all things Japanese”. The e-mails varied in theme, but reached the peak of virulence when I reviewed a Japanese restaurant here that served… horror of horrors… both sushi and gyoza (dumplings). According to this self-styled expert, no such thing ever… EVER… happens in a “real” Japanese restaurant – a) because restaurants in Japan specialize in one type of food and wouldn’t have mixed the two (possibly traditional, but long no longer true), and b) gyoza are Chinese by origin and “real” Japanese would never serve them (origin true, but it was an import over 500 years ago, the style of dumpling is significantly changed from the Chinese original, and gyoza are served all over Japan). He summarized by demanding that I never review a Japanese restaurant again, and stick with things I was qualified to write about.

I wonder if he knows that sushi, too, was a Chinese import, almost 1000 years ago, but nonetheless?

Needless to say, and as anyone who reads these pages knows, I’ve ignored him completely (other than suggesting what he could do with “his” traditions).

And, one evening last week, found me at a relatively new Japanese spot here in the ‘hood – Sake Sushi, Beruti 2640, 4822-9100. [Closed in early 2016] It’s a small spot, though it’s hard to judge how many folks could fit in the space, because it’s all booths, and we all know you can always fit another person or two in a booth. High-backed booths that give you a sense of privacy, but also, other than perhaps the folks at the booth directly across the center aisle, a sense of isolation. It was fine for me, I was on my own, had a book to read, and was comfortable on that basis, but if I was with people, I’d probably want to feel a bit more like I was in a restaurant that had others in it. Still, it’s quite pretty – done up in cream colors, with soft golden glowing lighting, pretty flower arrangements… and I’m sure my correspondent would shudder to find out… not a Japanese person working there. It seems to be run by (including the sushi bar), a team of young, scruffy Argentines who simply have a passion for things Japanese, and sushi in particular. Very pretty little plates used on the tables – though I think the three compartment soy sauce dish is off base – makes it hard to mix the soy sauce with a little wasabi, should that be your style, on the flip side, I like that there’s an additional small plate placed between the sushi platter and you, to set a piece down, or let the soy sauce drip off, or what have you. Saves on all those little dribbles on the table, you know?

I went ahead and ordered a plate of gyoza because I simply like them, and they make a nice start to a sushi meal. My goodness, it’s practically turning the world on its head, so to speak – eating a hot dish first, and an import to boot. The one oddity here, it turns out they serve a single gyoza as a sort of hors d’oeuvre, along with a little shot of some sort of mixed tropical tasting juices (which the waitress wasn’t quite sure what it contained). She apologized for serving it, knowing I was about to get a plate of the same, but said that the owners insisted everyone get one to start. That’s okay, I like dumplings, though I do think it’s a little silly to not have a secondary item available to place in front of those who order them as appetizers. The filling on these, quite good – nicely spiced, well packed but not overly dense – the dough a trifle undercooked – they did these potsticker style, where you fry them first on one side and then steam them in the same pan with a lid and some liquid – but they hadn’t quite fried them enough to get a good lightly crispy side, and they hadn’t quite steamed them long enough to cook the dough through. Not so underdone as to be an issue, but enough to be noticeable.

There were a good number of options for ordering – several sushi and/or sashimi combinations, individual rolls or pieces – I opted for what bordered on “too much”, but it gave me the opportunity to try a good range of what they were offering – their 30 piece “special”, which includes salmon, white fish, shrimp, octopus – individual sushi, sashimi, simple rolls, and a few creative combination rolls. Thankfully, they’re light on the salmon and cream cheese combos – it appeared in one half roll, and there was a little cream cheese sharing a roll with some shrimp and avocado. Not that I dislike cream cheese, at all, but if I’m going to mix it with salmon, I usually like it on a bagel… or maybe atop a caramelized sweet potato… The quality of the fish was very good, all fresh. The rice was well made, and unlike many places I’ve encountered here, not overly sweetened with mirin.

Service was friendly and relatively efficient. It’s hard to say how the kitchen does when they’re busy, I was the sole diner until about midway through my meal, but both the gyoza and the sushi came out fairly quickly after ordering… okay, better to have held the gyoza back and finish cooking them for another minute or two… okay?

 Curves are so emotional.”

– Piet Mondrian, Dutch artist

Buenos Aires – I love that there’s a single Spanish word that means something that has ups and downs or highs and lows. I gleaned it from the commentary left about a spot on our local online restaurant guide, Guia Oleo. The comment was left in regard to the original locale of a sushi restaurant here, one that I haven’t been to, and which receives, regularly, wildly mixed commentary in terms of its quality. They apparently don’t take the commentary to heart, since all the negatives have been duplicated in a recently opened up a branch near to me – opposite the Buenos Aires Design Center, in a semi-hidden spot… well, no, it’s not hidden, it’s underground, with a small sign and a bored looking doorman more tuned in to his MP3 player than to customers – he may be secretly registering your entry to the open wood lined stairwell, but he gives no acknowledgement, no greeting, no real sign of being connected with the place (in fact, I wasn’t sure that he was until one of the managers called him down to the bottom of the stairs… by banging on the metal stair rail with a metal spoon until he got the guy’s attention). As you leave the bottom of this semi-elegant stair, coming around a screen of white painted bamboo, you find yourself in a Mondrian painting – all cubes of red and black and white. If you’re lucky, one of the two managers? maitre d’s? hangers about? might actually deign to acknowledge your existence as well… no, that’s unfair, they actually will wander over to you in a moment, with a smile, find out how many are in your party, and then wave vaguely towards a table, before returning to their far more interesting personal conversations. We’ve arrived at Bokoto, Pueyrredón 2476, 4809-0265. [This place has closed.]

From that point on, service kind of improves. While these guys who seem to be running the room are dressed down, in t-shirts, jeans, sneakers, looking like they’ve rolled out of bed sometime in the last hour, the waiters are dressed in smart black uniforms with red trim, the restaurant name embroidered on it, and Mumm champagne’s logo on their sleeve – guess who paid for the uniforms…? They’re friendly, they’re happy to present you with a menu, they’re delighted to take your order, even being helpful in making suggestions and listening to your special requests… and then they go off to stand around at strategically placed points, where they remain, immobile, until you wave at them wildly, hoping that, perhaps, your food, which you can see up on the counter, might actually be brought to your table by one of them, at which point they leap into momentary action… I had momentary flashes of being on a Borg Cube… But back to those management folk – and just the observation, as I’ve seen it here more commonly than anywhere else I’ve been – why do restaurants put money and effort into having their spaces and waitstaff, and sometimes even kitchen staff, looking so good, and then let their key personnel dress like… schlubs? And why, oh why, is the sushi-man wearing a stiff French beret the size of a large pizza?

The food, likewise, is a mixed bag. It’s quite prettily presented. We tried out a couple of favorites, goma-ae and gyoza, the former the more mixed bag of the two – normally a nice little bowl of spinach and toasted sesame, this was presented on a plate with half a dozen or so tall, spindly spires of spinach, pressed together… firmly… how else could they stay together towering over the plate? The flavor was good, and there was a nice amount of it, certainly enough for two people to share. The dumplings were actually quite good – nice and light, cooked well, a savory filling, and lightly dressed in soy and oil, and again, a good number of them. Had we but stopped at appetizers…

…but we moved on to the sushi. For my part, I thought I’d see what they offered up in a combination that wasn’t strictly salmon – after all, the menu points out on virtually every one of their combinations that they don’t include the various shellfish on offer – shrimp, oysters, crab…. Our charming waiter suggested their makis especiales, a quartet of differing half portions of some of their special rolls – and was their anything in particular that I was interested in…? Why yes – as noted, not all salmon, and please, please, please, no cream cheese, no filadelfia, on the rolls. Not a problem. For his part, my dining companion went with a simple plate of nigiri sushi – all salmon. So hmm… mine has… let’s see, a salmon and cream cheese roll, a shrimp and cream cheese roll, a salmon and white fish roll, and a crabstick roll. Yes, well, thanks, that was, umm, exactly what I asked for… The fish itself is fresh. The rice, a bit… no, a lot, on the sweet side – wayyyyy too much mirin. Easy enough on the nigiri for my companion to simply eat the salmon off the top of his and leave the rice behind. Not so easy for me, though at least dessert was not a consideration.

And, we’re off… not a spot we’ll be returning to. The bajos in the altibajos are just a bit too deep, and the altos don’t near make up for them.

 Time is the measure of business.”

Francis Bacon, Sr., English Philosopher and Lawyer

Buenos Aires – You know that moment when something in the back of your mind says, “this is a mistake…”. Not quite loud enough to be a shout and frighten you into a flight response, but just enough to set things on edge. That happened several months ago, when I wandered into a little loungy space near to the Recoleta Cemetery & Entertainment Complex (it really is all one, even if they pretend there are several separate entities involved) that advertised “sushi libre” on a little sandwich board out front. I’m almost always game for all you can eat sushi, but something said, “no…..” in a voice trailing away like it had leapt over a cliff. The friends I was with apparently weren’t salivating at the thought of unlimited pieces of raw fish as much as I, and we up and left. Then, this past Sunday, when all of my local friends, really, all of them, were either being slugs at home or had other plans, or at least claimed such nonsense, I found myself wandering the ‘hood late in the evening, looking for a bite to eat. Henry was off to La Plata for a day or two, I’d been indoors working most of the day, and I was feeling sort of, poor me… and there was this warm, inviting, red glow, and the sandwich board. And so, I found myself at Business, Guido 1936, 4801-1844. [This place has closed and been replaced by something equally innocuous looking and frightening.]

My brain didn’t do the mistake thing off the bat, it waited until I was seated on a comfy banquette, a tall, cute waiter in attendance, looking around at walls cluttered with Americana that invoke a road trip down Route 66. It waited until I’d made a vague attempt to actually read the menu, printed in miniscule yellowish white lettering on glowing red plastic, in a room lit by reddish orange lights. Had I had my reading glasses with me I couldn’t have read this – there’s not enough light to provide contrast between the letters and the background. My waiter concurred, with a sigh, that he generally has to list off a good number of the items that they offer because no one can read the damned things. That settled, I’d already more or less decided beforehand on a sushi libre, it’s what drew me in in the first place – though, as a couple of them passed my table, I note that they offer hamburgers that seem to be about an inch thick, with real buns… so maybe one day… – and then I realized I was seated right next to the sushi station, a little three sided box of Ikea style shelving, a little more than waist high, behind which, now, a young man came to make sushi. No refrigerator, no water to wash up, just shelves… and that was when my hindbrain started its protest.

And yet, I paid it no mind, instead, watching, fascinated, as this youngster proceeded to start onto various sushi plates… and realized that at least, he wasn’t storing the fish on the shelves… he was actually running back and forth to the kitchen about every 10-15 minutes for more pieces of salmon… and it was pretty much just salmon. There was an occasional bit of pseudo-crab, and there was lots of cream cheese, and a bit of avocado, but there was mostly, as usual, salmon. And he had some damp cloths to wipe his hands on, which he did replace now and again through the evening. But still… there it was… that trailing scream to run… and I didn’t. I’d ordered the “sushi libre especial”, the difference from the “sushi libre clasico” being that the especial includes sashimi. Not much of it, especially given the 15 peso or so price differential, but I didn’t know that upfront – save your money, or insist on more sashimi perhaps – and it did indeed begin to arrive.

Now, it was a slow process. I’ve watched many a sushi maker make sushi in front of me. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever seen it take quite so long. Oliver, over at Argentina’s Travel Guide kindly offered up that maybe his sense of time lapse was altered due to hunger, but no, really, I’ve never seen anyone move so slowly and deliberately making pieces and rolls of sushi. I’d estimate my first plate took him a minimum of 15 minutes, possible 20, and we’re not talking anything elaborate. A plain salmon roll, a salmon and cream cheese roll, a salmon and avocado roll, a couple of pieces of salmon sushi, a half dozen slices of sashimi, and part of a crabstick roll. I’m not really complaining, I was warm and cozy, I had a magazine to read, the music in the background was good – a bit of cacophony from one table of six people not far from me who were of the sort who seem to feel the need to shout to each other, hoot and holler, despite being no more than a couple of feet apart, you know, the sort who in their late 20s still think it’s roll on the floor hysterical to blow coke threw a straw at each other – and I do mean the bubbly drink.

And once it arrived, it was passably good. The salmon was fresh, the rice was properly made, it was a good portion, and I made my way through it relatively quickly and methodically. Then I settled back to read a little bit more, figuring the waiter would get around to me shortly and I could order another roll or two. And he did get around to me, about 15 minutes later, when he removed my first plate and deposited another not much different from the first, without a word. And, I realized, as I was about halfway through the second plate and thinking, okay, this is just a trifle too much food, that the sushi-man was already hard at work on another platter. I waved and got his attention and told him that really, fifty some pieces of sushi was quite sufficient, thank you much, and a third platter was not necessary… he sighed, and put the couple of already made rolls back in one of his plastic bins and carted it back to the refrigerator, I hope. The waiter seemed equally surprised, and perhaps a bit disappointed, I don’t know, maybe they had a bet going on how much I would eat – but he offered me dessert, which I declined, and then a coffee, likewise, and we settled on a cup of tea while he figured out the bill – set price, remember, but that took another 20 minutes…

So, overall, Business offers okay sushi (and maybe hamburgers), there’s far better to be had, and certainly both more variety, and faster service. But on a drizzly, cold night, when all your friends have simply abandoned you…

“What kind of restaurant makes you cook your own food?”

– Bill Murray, in Lost in Translation

Buenos Aires – Home again, home again, dancing a jig… sorry, channeling Mother Goose for a moment there. After catching up on some sleep, unpacking, getting back in the swing of things, etc., I had phoned my friend Michael to see if he wanted to head off to a puertas cerradas Japanese restaurant that some guests of ours had told me about. He was game, I made the reservation, and we were all set to go. Then someone phoned from the place about an hour before we were to head there to say that they’d decided to cancel “the event” for the evening and would we consider coming next week instead… we would, though we were disappointed. In its stead, we headed to another of the Japanese spots that’s been on my list for awhile, one we’d poked in and looked at about a year ago – lots of little separate curtained off rooms, waitresses in kimonos, all very quiet and tranquil… we secured a reservation and at the appointed hour found ourselves situated at a large, highly polished table with a gas burner atop. Shabu-shabu is the specialty of Nihonbashi, Moreno 2095, 4951-7381, in Congreso. What is shabu-shabu you might ask? I’ll get to that in a moment, but first we had to put on our traffic cone orange full body aprons that the place uses in place of napkins… I understand the reason for the apron – this style of eating can be a little messy – but how about a napkin too – the aprons just aren’t absorbent enough to use successfully. At least they bring hot damp towels both before and after the meal. [Closed permanently during the pandemic]

We kicked off the meal with a bit of sushi – sharing the combo sushi platter, which comes with a nice array of different fish, and, I think the first time I’ve seen it in Buenos Aires, ikura, or salmon eggs. The sushi menu also lists uni, the love it or hate it butterscotch pudding textured and colored sea urchin roe, but they didn’t have any in house last night – they must have it relatively often as our waitress had to go ask if there was any available for the evening. The sushi combo is presented very prettily on a small wooden bridge… the one drawback to sharing it is that it’s designed as a one person main course, and most of the items on it are presented as single pieces… we did the back and forth “you pick one” and then “I’ll pick one” routine. The ikura was such a treat that we decided to order another round… not an inexpensive proposition as it turned out at 9 pesos a piece. Overall though, the combo is a decent deal (50 pesos) given the quality of the sushi, which is very good – not quite up to what I had at Yuki a few weeks back, and of course, my thoughts are tainted by truly spectacular sushi had in New York while on vacation, but still quite good.

Nihonbashi offers a choice of two different types of beef for your dipping pleasure… straightforward Argentine beef, and Argentine raised Wagyu beef, the famed Japanese cattle that are raised to provide Kobe beef. [A note: last year, in November, in a financial protectionist move (however, claiming cultural reasons), the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture declared that Wagyu wasn’t just a designation of the breed of cattle, but also indigenous to Japan, and that although for years the Japanese have been selling the cattle to overseas ranchers, they didn’t want anyone outside Japan ever using the term Wagyu again. The rest of the world, unsurprisingly, has simply ignored this declaration.] These two photos should offer up a sense of the difference in the beef – the Wagyu, on the right, showing the “marbling” of fat that it’s famous for.