You all know the Roving Ravenous Horde already from past posts. I haven’t posted about our outings for a bit because, well, we just haven’t been having a whole lot of luck. But hey, you take the bad with the good, right? So, just a brief look at what we’ve been up to in September and October so far…. Heavy on the photos, light on the text.
Spiagge di Napoli, Av. Independencia 3527, Almagro (on the line with Boedo). Has a reputation as being one of the most authentic Neapolitan restaurants in the city. Let’s just say they should take a trip to the beaches (spiagge) of Naples, and sample some of the actual food of the region, because this ain’t it. Four of us descended on the place for our weekly lunch….
The only dish we all really liked, and actually, one of the better versions of lengua a la vinagreta (tongue in vinaigrette) that I’ve had here in BA. Tender as could be and really well seasoned and tangy.
Easily the worst thing on the table, gummy, cold, unseasoned and unpleasant eggplant fritters. Nothing redeemable about these. Not even doused with lemon juice and salt.
Famous for their pastas… the thing is, Naples is more famous for their dried pasta dishes – thin ribbon pastas like spaghetti and linguine, and tube shaped pastas like paccheri and ziti. So maybe our fault for what we ordered, although the only one of those four that was available on the menu was spaghetti. Fussili with pesto. Okay, the pasta itself was pretty well made, and cooked al dente. But the pesto was little more than chopped basil and garlic in a whole lot of oil. A whole lot. Beneath that pile of pasta is a roughly 1/2″ deep pool of cheap olive oil. No salt, no cheese, no pinenuts. No dice.
There is a Neapolitan lasagna. It’s a lasagna replacing the meat sauce with a tomato sauce, and replacing the bechamel with ricotta. This did have the ricotta, but then it was layered with ham and cheese (that’s very Argentine, not Italian), a lot of cooked spinach, and then topped with bolognese (although, to be fair, while it was the waiter’s recommendation, we did have the option of ordering it with classic Neapolitan tomato sauce, which, it turns out, we should have). There is actually a Neapolitan version of bolognese, inspired by the classic ragu of Bologna, using ground beef, carrots, and tomatoes – so this was more or less that. It’s just that none of it came together.
We will give them that the meatballs weren’t bad – surprisingly light, and quite well seasoned, and… there’s that tomato sauce that should have been on the lasagna!
All around, however, kind of a fail, and we choose to disagree with the assessment of it being an authentic Neapolitan spot.
Casal de Catalunya, Chacabuco 863, San Telmo – Okay, this one really was our bad in some ways. Not totally, but yeah, kinda. First off, I picked the place for the Horde outing because it was Catalán “national” day. Expected it to be busy, but there were just the two of us who showed up (several last minute cancellations), and a family of eight at another table. I reviewed this place once, twelve years ago, and haven’t been back, despite having liked it quite a bit. It’s fairly pricey, even taking into account the plunge of the peso, and the two of us decided, and this is probably where it’s our bad, to go with the menú ejecutivo rather than order from the a la carte menu. It was all Catalán items on the menú, but let’s face it, the daily lunch prix fixe is rarely the best choice for a great experience. It was, however, the difference between spending around 400 pesos apiece and spending well over 1000.
The two appetizer options were pa amb tomaquet, which classically is bread coated with crushed tomatoes and drizzled with olive oil. For some reason, they’ve taken to using rather basic white bread (not like the great breads they had that first time around) and cutting way back on the tomatoes and then topping it with a layer of jamón serrano. It was okay. A tortilla de papas was… hmm… insipid is about the kindest word I can come up with.
For the main courses, abadejo, or ling cod, with grilled vegetables. Look, there was nothing wrong with it, it just wasn’t interesting. A couple of pieces of grilled fish, lightly seasoned, and the same with a mix of chopped vegetables, and a kind of bland mayo on the side. The cannellones catalanes, a Catalán take on Italian cannelloni, is a classic dish, typically filled with minced, parcooked chicken and vegetables, and topped with a bechamel sauce and cheese. This was on the track, it was just that the filling was a mix of pureed chicken and pork, without vegetables in evidence, and a texture like pink slime, and then the single cannellón was drowned in a sea of bechamel (if you order the dish off the main menu you get more cannelloni to bechamel ratio, with three of them in the pot). Again, not bad, though the texture of the filling was a bit off-putting, but not good.
The best was stepping off the menu and ordering a creme catalán for dessert – a lovely eggy, vanilla custard with maybe a hint of orange to it.
Meanwhile, the family to the side was happily moaning over an array of dishes ordered off the menu, including a whole suckling pig. Lesson learned?
Baraba Resto, Pareja 2997, Villa Pueyrredón – same issue here as the previous spot. With three of us out to lunch (we’ve had several regular members of the Horde away on various trips over the last couple of months), two of us went for the menú ejecutivo, and even ordered the same thing. And this, with having the foreknowledge that the recommendations for the place, while no one specifically said “don’t order the prix fixe”, were all “go with the house specialties, that’s where they shine”. This time, definitely our bad.
A decent empanada. Nothing to write home about, but decent. Of note, the little onion and pepper salad on the side, more or less a salsa criolla, that added some zing to it.
On the other hand, absolutely nothing to like about the polenta frita, which was a weird couple of curls of gummy, unseasoned polenta, with no cheese or butter in it that we could discern, and deep fried to the point of nearly being burnt.
And two of us both got the day’s special of a pork burger, topped with pickles (not pickles, just salty slices of cucumber), chili aioli (no evidence of chili), and cheddar (of course, the usual American cheese sandwich slices). But the toppings weren’t the real problem, which was the burger patty itself, it was so hard and chewy that we had trouble cutting it with steak knives. I had two bites and quit, my other companion made it through about a third before giving up. The fries were okay at best.
And, the smart one at the table ordered off their specialty menu, and got their slow braised pork breast, which was falling off the bone tender, beautifully seasoned with a tangy, and not sweet, barbecue sauce, and accompanied by a mount of delicious, buttery mashed potatoes. This one was definitely a live and learn moment.
Interestingly, the two women at the next table over from us both ordered off the menú of the day as well, a vegetable tart, and a vegetable wrap, and both flagged the waiter down and sent them back, complaining they were inedible. I don’t know what they then ordered as we’d left by the time they got their food, but it was something off of the a la carte menu. Our waiter never asked why we hadn’t eaten more than a couple of bites of the burgers, he just cleared them away. So, the upshot is, stick with the common wisdom – order from their specialties menu.
O’Toxo, Av. Belgrano 1825, Once – this spot came to our attention recently as a spot for great Spanish seafood. And, just to dispel any dread to reading ahead, this spot was the recovery from the three previous fumbles.
A quite good half of a tabla of seafood – mixed shrimp, calamari, and mussels – heavy on the last, light on the first. A really good portion for three of us to share. Simply seasoned with salt and paprika, it wasn’t a wow, but it was good.
Instead of another seafood dish, we’d opted to share a plate of raxo, a classic Basque dish of pork in a mildly spicy (hot paprika and garlic) sauce. This one was excellent, in fact, one of the best renditions of raxo I’ve had, anywhere, and the sauce was so good we were still mopping it up with the remaining potatoes from the seafood platter.
I’ve seen leche frita on menus before in Spanish restaurants, but just never tried it. When it comes down to it, I never really gave it much thought, assuming it was some sort of creme brulee-ish dish. But it’s not. It’s a thick milk pudding, breaded in flour and egg, and fried, and then drizzled with a molasses-like cane syrup. And it’s a winner in our book!
The Horde recovers!
