The Roving Ravenous Horde continues to venture forth, marauding across the city in search of good food! Then again, we don’t always find it….
I should just stop with this photo, give you the name of the place, and suggest… “No.”
Los Orientales, Av. Rivadavia 3981, Almagro….
Regular readers will remember my on and off obsession with Suprema Maryland, the Argentine version of a classic dish. Fried chicken topped with bacon or ham, roasted peppers, creamed corn, and some kind of fried potatoes. This is… not my favorite version of the dish. The chicken itself was fine – a huge breast, and nice and juicy with a crispy crust. The rest of it kind of sucked. Barely cooked bacon, soggy, greasy fries, and I don’t even want to discuss the abomination that was purported to be creamed corn (some sort of sweet cornstach pudding with some kernels of corn in it).
The sirloin steak was much the same, with over-fried eggs atop.
A classic milanesa a caballo, a breaded fried thin steak topped with eggs, lemon, and fries. Not bad, not good.
And, another milanesa done up calabresa style – tomato sauce, mozzarella, and longaniza sausage. Same assessment, though perhaps a bit heavy on the grease and oil.
And a bizarrely bad Caesar salad of shredded wilted lettuce topped with huge fried croutons, a ton of shredded mozzarella, and some shreds of chicken. The dressing was… something.
Basically, none of us finished more than about a third of any of these dishes except the milanesas.
But let’s flip to the super happy side of going out…
Zo Nikkei, 11 de Septiembre de 1888 2451, Belgrano. Opened about six months ago, I’ve been hearing rumblings of how good this place is for creative, nikkei style sushi. Clearly not a big draw at lunchtime, with not only no other customers than us, but half the staff (including the kitchen cooks who do the hot food, and the bartender) didn’t show up to work. That doesn’t bode well, and I hope it’s a one-off day, because this place is worth the trip to this little side street just north of Barrio Chino.
Octopus, tender as could be, topped with dots of olive and yellow chili purees and a hint of citruses. Superb, and with five of us at the table, they sent out ten pieces rather than the promised eight. Actually, this was a theme that held through the meal, there were a couple of things that were to be either four or eight that came out five or ten. 1800 pesos.
Although they told us the kitchen was shutdown, they were able to manage fried prawns, for both this dish with cream cheese and a teriyaki dipping sauce, and a couple of the sushi rolls. 700 pesos.
Fresh tuna sashimi with an emulsified ceviche sauce. 1800 pesos.
Not ordered, but a gift from the house while we got started – salmon nigiri with a light brushing of something citrusy.
The pacific roll, made with salmon, tuna, and avocado, white truffle oil, sea salt, and chives. A little heavy on the sea salt crystals, but easy enough to brush off the excess. 1200 pesos.
Looking at the pictures, I’m not totally sure which one was which, so here, four rolls that we ordered: Ebi Shiso – stir-fried prawns rolled up with kale and avocado in shiso leaves and cured salmon; Acevichado Zo – fried prawns and avocado wrapped in spiced salmon and topped with an acevichado sauce – basically an emulsified ceviche liquid; Zo Sake – salmon tartare, fried salmon, truffle oil, and a classic tare sauce; and Veggie Zo – just to try something different, carrot, cucumber, and avocado surrounded by pickled beet and topped with an avocado mousse and a sprinkling of furikake spice. 1200 pesos each.
We each had our own favorites. No one disliked anything. The sushi was creative and tasty, and beautifully presented. Talking to the sushiman afterwards, he’s got the pedigree of having been sushiman at Osaka Puerto Madero, Parú, and Fabric Sushi, so he knows what he’s doing. We were also delighted to see that out of a dozen sushi rolls, only two featured cream cheese.
Add to all this some quite good coffee at the end and we were happy campers. If we hadn’t been out for just sushi we might have been disappointed that none of the hot dishes were available, but as it was, sushi was our reason for being there. Short wine list, usual suspects – it’d be cool if they’d offer some wines that were a bit outside of the common commercial ones, albeit higher priced ones. Overall the place is expensive, but not as much as some of the other high end sushi spots in town, and easily as good quality. And, made quite palatable on the wallet with a 15% discount for cash. Highly recommended.
