Bestia, Primera Junta 702, San Isidro, has been luring diners up to the north suburbs for, I think, going on two years now, maybe more. It’s promise, basically… meat, meat, and more meat. It was one of the first places around to start offering dry aged steaks…

 

…and “perusing” their meat locker, because, well, you can, is a study in little gasps of surprise… a rack of two-year aged rib-eyes hauntingly beckons from one shelf, as do nearly as aged t-bones and sirloins. One has to be wiling to crack open the wallet, with prices that range from 1150 to 1250 pesos per matured steak ($27-29 – which internationally isn’t all that much, but still pretty damned high for BA). The menu, thankfully, offers plenty of other meat options, including other steaks, with prices at least gentler than those – main courses run from 520 pesos ($12) for beef cheeks to 820 ($19) for suckling pig.

 

The room is warm and cozy, there’s wood of various varieties stacked on various shelves, along with fermenting and pickled vegetables and condiments. There’s an air of what some designer would probably call elegant rusticity to the whole thing. We settled in to peruse…

 

…over a couple of cocktails, one a gin and tonic with a splash of mezcal and smoky bitters, the other a sort of mezcal based sour – both excellent, and conducive to considering whether my dinner companion (friend Jamie, from our Horde lunches) and I were going to plunk down the 1800 pesos ($42) for the seven course tasting menu (plus beverages), or go a la carte. After getting the low down on what was on the menu that evening (it changes every night), we decided to go the latter route, as three of the seven courses were sort of our last choices from the menu listings. We created our own.

 

Sharing everything, we basically put together a five course tasting – with three appetizers and two main courses. Neither of us go in much for dessert, so the extra app replaced that. Here, roasted oyster mushrooms, duck ham, and cubes of smoked and cured egg yolk are clustered over a mushroom puree, and accompanied by a “potato chip”. A great start, and all delicious, albeit I felt the mushroom puree could have used a bit more seasoning and brightening – a pinch more salt, a few drops of lemon or vinegar. Appetizers, by the way, run from 210-410 pesos ($5-10).

 

A beautifully smoky butifarra sausage with marinara sauce, fried dumplings, and a parmesan tuile. More please!

 

Perfectly smoked, yes, smoked, sweetbreads. I don’t think I’ve ever had sweetbreads… or for that matter, any organ meat, that was smoked to cook it. Amazing. And accompanied by sundry bits and purees of orange, morcilla sausage, apple, and “sanfaina” (garlic, onion, tomato). This one ranks up there among the best sweetbread dishes I’ve had, anywhere.

 

The whopping suckling pig, cochinillo, comes as an entire shoulder, lightly smoked and then roasted to crackling perfection, and a rolled loin stuffed with, I think, peppers and herbs. It’s all artfully arranged over a medley of romesco sauce, butter beans, black olives, and dollops of roasted apple sauce. Yum.

 

And, a far more austere presentation, but no less delicious, a Flintstonian beef rib, smoked, and delightfully tender, with an accompanying mound of chewy, dark, roasted to caramelized perfection vegetables, and, out of the picture, an array of vegetable pickles – sweet and spicy chilies, and green onions. Who  pickles green onions? That works.

It all works, in fact. And despite the price tag, which is high, but not outrageously so (there are plenty of more expensive places to eat in and out of town, including my own) – all of the above plus a bottle of decent wine, and tip, ran to 4200 pesos ($99) for two – it’s worth every centavo. It’s also worth the effort to get there – if you don’t have a car (or willingness to shell out about 400-500 pesos for Uber, Cabify, or taxi each way), it will likely involve a couple of bus lines, or train and bus… (my own route going was the 101 bus to Retiro station, then the Tigre train to San Isidro, and then a 20-25 minute walk, though coming back we’d determined that the 168 bus stops right at the corner by the restaurant, taking us back to Corrientes and Pueyrredon, where we transferred to our respective buses home). Figure a solid hour and a half each way by public transit.

Would I go back. Oh yes. We were already discussing how many more trips it would take us to sample the rest of the menu. And, the menu changes seasonally, so plenty of meat in the offing! And, anyone visiting who cares to take me out for a dry-aged rib-eye is, of course, welcomed with open arms…!