Our usual hodgepodge of spots for a Bite Marks… some from before my trip, some from after.

 

Life is short, eat dessert first. Okay, we ate it last, but still. And yes, that picture is really only about the ice cream, nothing else. I swear on a Baskin-Robbins napkin. Heladería Capricci, Fraga 602, Chacarita. I do actually swear that the passionfruit gelato is probably the best passionfruit gelato I’ve had, anywhere. The glazed chestnut gelato, not so much, kind of bland.

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We were in the ‘hood because we’d just had lunch at Almacén Comunal, Guevara 405, Chacarita. A spot we’ve been hearing about on and off for a year or so, supposed to be creative, casual bites and a selection of craft beers. A quartet of us met up….

We shared two Egg Avocado Toasts. Good. No more than that. The bread was the best part, they have some really good housemade breads. The avocados a bit mushy and past their prime, the egg was cooked just right. I mean, it delivered what it said… there was toast, there was an avocado, there was an egg. But come on, butter the toast or something, give the thing some seasoning other than a grind or two of pepper over the top. Even salt would be nice. 155 pesos.

Two of us got the Pastrón, a pastrami burrito. Good pastrami, the caramelized onions, cheese, and chimichurri inside an interesting accompaniment. Not really a burrito except in format. The potatoes underneath, a lot of burnt going on there. It, too, was good, but no more than that. 320 pesos.

There’s so little I can say about this dish that the other two of us got. It would be rude of me to say more. Three thin slices of peceto, or top round, in breadcrumbs, and fried to the point where they could be cracked like old leather. The mac ‘n cheese underneath, an interesting idea, but tasting of nothing but macaroni and maybe some form of cream cheese with some vague seasoning. Their claim that it’s a mix of cheddar, mozzarella, and provoleta… no. Maybe provoleta, a little… but there’s no elasticity from mozzarella, and there’s certainly no flavor of cheddar. Fail all around. 260 pesos.

The supposed amazing craft beer selection turned out to be three different beers. Yawn.

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Let’s move on to happier spots (well, we did, we had that gelato… and eye candy). A solo visit to one of the three outposts of Growlers, here in Recoleta at Av. Santa Fé 1430. Here, the craft beer selection is far more extensive, with a rotating selection of 30 beers from around the country and a couple of imports as well. Not only available by the pint there, but you can pick up a growler (a jug for beer) and have them fill it and cap it for you, and bring back the jug for refills.

But I was mostly there to try their burger. Their “#01” burger is a double smashed patty concoction topped with pickles, onions, blue cheese, arugula pesto, and toasted peanuts. Odd, but it sounded intriguing, and just to go full tilt, I topped it off with a poached egg and crispy bacon. The burger, while I’m not a huge fan of the smashed patty style, because I normally like my burgers fairly rare, works. Nice and juicy, well seasoned. And, the combination works as well. It was very, very good. A little small, in comparison the size burgers you get at most places around here these days, but not excessively small. The only thing I wasn’t all that thrilled with on the burger was the bun, which is sort of a tasteless white bread. If I were to guess, someone forgot to put salt in the dough. The fries… meh. Once you get past the few longer fries on top, everything was little short 1-2 cm long broken bits, and they’re greasy. In combo with fries and a pint, 380 pesos, plus the extras of egg (45) and bacon (60). I’d go back. Oh, I went back…

…for the triple smashed lamb burger with arugula pesto, mozzarella, and smoked eggplant. Excellent! And something I didn’t spot the first time to go with the fries, they have smoked mayonnaise, which is fantastic. Also tried an an empanada – slow cooked pork shoulder (bondiola) with a mix of spices, and a sort of mildly spicy cocktail sauce to go with it. If I wasn’t convinced the first time around, I was this time – and interestingly, a totally different bun – of really good quality and lots of flavor, and also, the fries were properly cooked and not broken up – something clearly changed in the interim – the two visits were roughly a month apart.

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And, staying in the burger world, there’s been a fair amount of recent touting of Voraz, Aguilar 2391, Palermo for it’s creative burger combinations. In particular, their monthly burger special. The place is a lot smaller than I’d envisioned, and at midday on a Sunday they were cleaning up what looked to have been an absolute mess from the night before. That’s the sort of thing you want to do before you open your doors to customers – there was trash and food residue all over the floor, half the tables hadn’t been cleaned – kind of off-putting. Also interesting, they have a menu on their website, pretty much none of which matches up to what they offer in the shop itself – a different selection of burgers, sandwiches, and wraps. Someone ought to keep that updated, ya know? [This branch, the original, closed, but several others have opened]

The burgers themselves are good. No more than that – they’re very thin patties, and more instagrammable than anything else – all of them are either two or three patties stacked, with toppings interleaved. The American was a double patty with american cheddar, crispy bacon, pickles, and aioli. The bun is good, and holds up well. The fries, just okay, clearly frozen fries, and not near as crisp on the outside as one might want. The other burger, the monthly special, the Jonny Montana was topped with provolone, red onions, and barbecue sauce. Pretty much the same review. Burgers run in the low 300s in combo with fries.

Would I go back? If I happened to be close by and in the mood for a burger, sure. Would I make a special trip? No.

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And, time for yet another attempt at finding decent delivery sushi. Yes, yes, some day I may give up. And here, ordering from Fuku Burritos & Temakis, which, based on their delivery area seems to be probably located somewhere around Palermo or Las Cañitas (and, which it turns out I reviewed back about 9 months ago in Bite Marks #67). They’ve slightly changed their name from Fuku Temakeria. And they seem to have gone from offering classic maki rolls and temakis to offering sushi “burritos” and temakis. Pretty much, the only difference is the “burritos” are fat sushi rolls – which is actually kind of nice, because they have a lot more filling. Prices these days run mid-300s for the burritos and around 150 for the temakis, so about 50% in peso terms than 9 months ago, but only about a 15% increase in dollar terms. No more than good, but not bad.