Just a long weekend break in Montevideo – Henry’s up visiting his family and also working with a dance troupe in Peru for a week and a half, and I decided to head across the river with my friend Steven. No full on reviews, and unless I spot some amazing architecture or something, I’ve written enough about the areas we’re likely to be in, in the past, I’m just going to highlight one dish from each place we ate at….
Bistró Sucré Salé, Bulevar General Artigas 1271 – a colleague and online friend took over the small bistro in the Alliance Francaise a couple of years back, turning into a real bistro instead of the café that had been there before. Lunch only, the majority of the menu is a simple meat dish with a choice of 1-3 side salads. But there’s also a short list of a la carte appetizers. We both ordered the quite good French onion soup, Steven went with a trio of the salads, an excellent lentil salad, a good black bean salad, and some lovely onion fritters. But the standout dish was a rabbit escabeche tartine – an open face sandwich topped with tender rabbit, carrots, and a sort of lightly pickled onion. Our host also sent us a flourless and sugarless chocolate and hazelnut torte which we’d happily eat again! Relatively inexpensive – appetizers around the 150-200 Uruguayan peso mark, main courses a shade over 300.
I’ve eaten several times at Tandory, Libertad 2851, and always enjoyed it immensely. A sirloin tataki, a mi cuit salmon dish, and lamb meatballs over spinach gnocchi, were all quite good, but the dish of the evening, roasted bone marrow with a tomato gremolata topping. Pardon the coloration – as in past visits, it’s hard to get a properly colored shot – the lighting is very pink-red, and unless I start shooting with a flash, the dishes are going to come out that way. Expensive, as always, but also as always, well worth it – all told, with tip, we shelled out about 3600 Uruguayan pesos for two (almost 1000 of that was the bottle of wine), or, $120.
Day two began with lunch at Toledo Bar de Tapas, Cerrito 499, which has gotten much press and much hype for their creative takes on tapas style dishes. We met up with friends Eduardo and Adriana Pisano, from Pisano Winery, which I’ve written about several times in the past. I don’t know if it was just that it’s had such a reputation built up that we had extraordinarily high expectations, but we found it to be just good. While everyting was really pretty and creative sounding, dish after dish just lacked in the most basic tenet of cooking – taste – particularly, lack of seasoning and balance. An interesting take on a tortilla de papas, a rather bland salmon causa, a strange and also bland lamb “cocktail”, basically slow cooked, shredded lamb in a potato foam, some very sticky sweet and salty sweetbreads. The only real standout dish was this breaded and deep-fried poached egg mucking about in a portobello foam. Even that needed less cream, more portobello, and a hit of salt. Most of the dishes run in the 200-280 Uruguayan peso range – somewhere between $6.50 and $9 per plate.
We decided not to order more than these, we just weren’t feeling the vibe, and instead headed to a classic neighborhood waterfront bar, El Tinkal, Emilio Frugoni 853, and split a couple of acceptable chivito uruguayo sandwiches… Two sandwiches for four of us, four drinks, and a tip, and we got out for 650 Uruguayan pesos, roughly $21, and if not as interesting intellectually, it was far more satisfying to the palate and stomach than the tapas above.
…followed by a visit to the Mercado Ferrando, Chaná 2120, a relatively new “food hall”, where, after wandering about a bit, we went for a round of espressos and a couple of pieces of excellent carrot cake at Café Ganache, just inside the entrance.
Eduardo and Adriana had highly recommended the very new Tian Fu, Av. Uruguay 752. The place is only a couple of months old, and there are just a trio of reviews on Trip Advisor and a single one on Foursquare, all giving this place five stars, and touting it as the only place in town with authentic Chinese food. Never having had Chinese food in Montevideo, I can’t speak to the quality of authenticity of the other spots in town, but if this is the best there is, we can only sigh. Besides us “white folk”, there were a trio of Chinese twenty-somethings were at one table, and a party of 7-8 middle aged Chinese folk were celebrating upstairs, and they all seemed to be enjoying themselves.
We found the boiled dumplings to be poorly made, bland, and gummy. The “spicy szechuan peppercorn chicken” had no szechuan peppercorns, a bare dusting of chili and green onion, and instead of being “dry fried” and crispy as is the norm, was hacked up bits of chicken wings with splintered bones, that seemed to have been stewed in oil. The only dish we liked was this “twice cooked pork belly”, which had at least a decent kick from some chili flakes and szechuan peppercorn, and a bit of fresh chili as well. Overall though, reminiscent of Chinese food you might get in a shopping mall food court. And, thinking back, to watching the orders go to the other two tables, the younger trio was sharing a big hot-pot, while the group upstairs was eating things like fried rice and sweet and sour chicken, dumplings, and egg rolls – so, at least the latter not exactly dipping into the supposedly more authentic side of the menu. While not pricey for the size of the dishes, which were all ample, it was pretty pricey for the disappointing quality, the tab for the three dishes, two portions of rice, and a shared bottle each of water and beer, plus tip, coming in at 1400 uruguayan pesos, $46.
