Not exactly what comes to mind when one says “bar & grill”, but I’m going sushi bar and Korean bbq here….
Faded Elegance
Back many, many moons ago, when I was writing for Time Out Buenos Aires, my editor Matt suggested we go check out a place he’d been hearing about that was a hotspot for sushi and quite the scene. I don’t recall why we never ended up getting there – I think we tried a couple of times to get a reservation without success, or maybe it just got tossed on the back burner. So this place might have the dubious honor of having been on my list to check out for longer than anywhere else in Buenos Aires, certainly more than a decade at this point. But I finally walked my way into Little Rose, Armenia 1672, Palermo [w3w: encoder.takes.younger], to see what’s what.
On the surface, it looks good – it’s setup beautifully, it’s up on the second floor of a gorgeous old home. But…
…looking closely, it’s just not well taken care of. Tablecloths are dirty and wrinkled, even the leather mats covering them are dingy with use and lack of solid cleaning. The same with the rest of the space – I’d guess this place hasn’t been solidly cleaned, and certainly not spruced up, in at least that decade. Now, it is lunchtime, so I don’t expect evening crowds, but I might expect more than being the only diner in the place… two people do come in just around the time I’m ready to leave.
Service is lackadaisical at best – there are only two people here – one the guy making the sushi, who is at the bar, cutting up a salmon, the other seeming to be kitchen help, manager, and waiter all in one – though of course that may be simply because they know they have little to no lunch business. He’s dressed in old jeans and t-shirt looking like he could use a touch of sprucing himself. But friendly.
They have several lunch menu options – I go for the one with miso soup and a 14-piece sushi combo (380 pesos, including water and coffee or dessert), and, figuring that 14 is at my lower limit, I also order one of their specialty rolls from the a la carte menu (340 pesos). It should be noted that that salmon being cut up is it. They don’t offer any other fish but salmon. Unless you count canned tuna in mayo. They do have prawns as well, but they’re apparently not included in the “mixed selection”, which turns out to be five pieces of salmon nigiri, four of sashimi, and five from three different types of rolls. To their credit on the last, only one of the types has cream cheese. The special roll is a rice-less one, with salmon, crisp salmon skin, ginger, avocado, and daikon – it wasn’t mentioned that it was breaded and fried – and literally breaded, not like dipped in breadcrumbs, but they’ve actually rolled out white bread to be very thin and used it as a wrapper. At the least, the salmon is fresh, and the rice is acceptable. The miso soup is murky, but okay. All in all, just kind of an average experience. With a beer, and tip, 974 pesos all told. Yawn. Again, back to the amazing sushi omakase at Nare just a post or two ago.
Disappearing Options
While I’ve been to a large percentage of the Korean restaurants in BA, I’ve not been to all of them. There are a few that are only open particular days or nights or hours that simply haven’t worked for me, and, I know there are some out there that are basically, “Koreans only” kind of spots that no one is going to tell me about, though I keep hoping I’ll either stumble across them, or find some kind soul from the local Korean community who’s willing to introduce me to them. (I’m even willing to not write about them if you want them kept off the radar….)
One of the former is BAB Cocina Coreana, Felipe Vallese 3132 Ruperto Godoy 758 (moved since this review, haven’t tried the new place), in Floresta [w3w: conga.outings.printers], which is, these days, only open at night. Part of my plan with this staycation is to get to a couple of those spots, and I texted Steven, my Sunday outing cohort, and we met up there. Now, the claim is that this was one of the first Korean restaurants to open its doors to non-Koreans, back a couple of decades ago (they were also located a couple of blocks away on Morón street). It also had a reputation for an array of different grilled meats, that you could select from, as well as a whole menu of classic Korean dishes that you could add to the table. Even just five years ago, when Allie at Pick Up the Fork reviewed the spot, it had the look of a pretty spectacular dining experience.
The space is an old “casa chorizo” – what locals call a very deep house, with all the rooms running off to one side of a long courtyard. It’s an odd setup, as it requires that you go out into the courtyard to go from one room to the next – we looked at one in San Telmo when we were first looking for space, but the thought of having to step outside to go from bedroom to bathroom at 3 in morning, or zipping through the rain to go from kitchen to living room, just didn’t sit well with either of us. They’ve closed in the back end of the courtyard as the dining area. The place is big. But there are few people dining there on the night we choose., just three young porteños and a young Korean couple.
Now, at a glance, it seems to be a decent spread for two people, but it’s really just not. Certainly not by comparison to any of the other Korean bbq places we’ve been to, and we’ve been to quite a few! Most of the table is taken up by a searingly hot grill that there’s no way to avoid being close to. It is nice that it’s a charcoal grill, many of the places here use gas, and the charcoal smoke adds a nice flavor to the meat, of course.
But the ban chan selection is limited – a little kimchi (not very spicy, but quite sour), two different potato salads, some cold poached fish, some beansprouts, and some pickled mild chilies. Compare that to some of the better places we’ve been… like Kyung Mi Jong or Yugane.
The meat selection isn’t bad looking, though you no longer get to choose – you just get what they give you. Though unfortunately, it turns out that most of it is gristly and fatty and not particularly high quality. A small steak, 2 strips of pork belly, some marinated pork shoulder, and thin strips of shortrib meat.
And other than that, there’s a bowl of lettuce to wrap the meat in, another of salad, two pieces of fried chicken wings accompanied by fried sweet potato, some rice balls, some watery soup, a single scallion pancake to share, and, the best thing on the table, a bi-bim-bap, sitting at one end of the grill to be mixed to your own tastes – with rice, egg, scallions, and some sauce. Overall, pretty slim pickings for a Korean bbq spot, and it’s all pretty mediocre, and pricey at 590 pesos (then again, it’s been about six months since we’ve hit a Korean bbq spot, so they all might be up around that these days) plus beverage – of which there is bottle water, Coke, or Quilmes beer. All in all, a pass. Too many other good spots around.
