Today, it’s all Italian! And mostly, pasta! Three new spots, and one revisit, take to the stage. Longer post than usual and heavy on the photos….

In 1937, a small Italian restaurant was opened on Sarmiento. Almost immediately successful, in 1941, the owners moved it a larger space on Montevideo, where it remained a fixture of local nightlife until the pandemic hit, closing in September 2020 after 83 years. In 1967, a second location had been opened of Pippo, at Paraná 356, and it remains open today. I’m not sure why I’d never checked the place out, it’s certainly well known and popular (don’t go by the empty tables, it was mere minutes after they opened for lunch – the place filled up quickly). Service was friendly and quick.

Although their focus is Italian, and pasta, I was feeling like a little nibble to start, and ordered up an empanada. It was… okay. The crust was kind of odd, almost like a saltine cracker without the salt, and the filling was an okay one of ground beef, green olives, and a touch of green onion, but not a lot of flavor or seasoning.

But I was here for their famous, or perhaps infamous, version of “tuco y pesto”, a semi-common Buenos Aires pasta special at many of the “old school” Italian spots. For those who are indecisive, it’s a pasta topped with the house tomato sauce and pesto, and a lot of cheese, and often, as here, imitating the Italian flag in presentation. At Pippo the pasta is “vermicelli”. In the US, where I’m from, and in a lot of the world, vermicelli are very thin, almost “angel hair” pasta, if not the same. But in Campania, Italy, where the pasta originated, vermicelli are actually thicker, usually about double the thickness of spaghetti.

The pasta is cooked to a proper al dente, a big thumbs up for that. The tuco, or tomato sauce, is pretty good. The pesto, however, is questionable. Basically, it tasted of nothing other than unseasoned, slightly watery, parsley, and seemed to have been just summarily blitzed in a food processor. A quick bit of online sleuthing and indeed, the Pippo recipe is “lots of parsley, a little basil, a hint of garlic, and a touch of salt”. For me, the parsley flavor was just too overwhelming, even when I mixed it all together, and it was missing everything else good about pesto – the garlic, the nuts, the cheese, the olive oil, and enough salt to season it. I can’t say I was overly happy with this pasta dish, though being the first time I’ve tried it, I now am thinking it might make for one of my “quests” to find a really good version of it here. Overall, an okay lunch, and given that the pasta was a mere 620 pesos, and the empanada 150, I can’t really complain.

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A place I’ve walked past a zillion times, and just never paid attention to. I tend to do that with restaurants along Av. Santa Fé, it’s such a busy commercial street that I rarely think about it as a dining destination. But, being on the lookout for Italian, this one got added to the list, especially as it’s only a few minute walk from home. Rosetta, Av. Santa Fé 1726 is a huge space, all done up in a vaguely tan and beige motif. Service… was almost a little diner-ish in the approach, but in an innocuous way, until later, when it just became unhelpful.

I ordered up a half portion of their mixed salad. On arrival, I questioned the size, and the waitress assured me it was the half portion. That’s a huge salad. Unfortunately, the tomatoes were under-ripe, the lettuce was wilted and browning, and hadn’t been washed well. A big disappointment other than the size. Now, the full salad runs 450 pesos, the half, 320. When I got my bill, I was charged for the full portion, and when I pointed this out, the same waitress claimed there is no half portion available. I pointed to it on the menu, to which she expressed her disbelief that it had “suddenly appeared” (these menus are probably the same ones that have been in use for years), and acquiesced to the lower price, despite my having gotten, apparently, the full size… or not… who knows?

I was here, however, to try the much touted braised beef ravioli in mushroom sauce. The ravioli themselves, good pasta, maybe slightly thicker than I’d prefer, but that’s personal taste. The filling, a lovely, slow cooked beef ragout. The sauce… no. Just no. A couple of pieces of mushroom, most of the flavor, if I were to guess, probably from a powdered mushroom stock base. And a thick, gloppy texture of cream that’s been thickened with way too much raw flour. I found a small strip of plastic wrap in it, and one of the ravioli had a piece of bone in it – waitress not interested nor apologetic. At 1100 pesos for seven ravioli, even if had been good, not a good value. I won’t be back.

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Let’s do the revisit next. I was invited to lunch by a friend to join him at Trattoria Olivetti, one of my favorite spots in the city for Italian food, at Cerviño 3800 in Palermo Chico. As always, the place is packed. The service bordering on impeccable. And, the food, delightful. We started off with a couple of salads – one an heirloom tomato salad with fresh figs and cucumbers, the other, thinly sliced zucchini topped with scattered fresh ricotta and lemon zest. Both delicious. The tomato salad could have used some sort of interesting dressing, rather than being left to be dressed with just olive oil and balsamic at the table. Just something to say they thought about more than just cutting up some vegetables. I’d still happily eat it again. We both really liked the zucchini a lot – and actually, that’s one of my favorite offbeat pizza toppings – zucchini, ricotta, and lemon.

The lasagna, long a favorite, has changed slightly. My friend was eating it, so I didn’t try it. It looks like it’s probably the same core lasagna (see the version on my original review, linked above), but a less interesting presentation, a bit smaller, and not as much lovely, crusty browned cheese atop. He opined that it was still very good.

Back in 2009, on a visit to NYC, I’d gone with a friend to Marea, and tried the much touted, and well worth it, fussili with red wine braised baby octopus and bone marrow. As I stated at the time, it was “stop in your tracks and pay attention good”. It was such an unusual sounding combination that I just assumed it was a more or less made up dish by chef Michael White. So, seeing an entry on Olivetti’s menu that was almost the same – spaghetti with red-wine braised octopus and bone marrow – I a) assumed it was sort of a knock-off of the famed dish, and b) had to order it. It’s a much more generous portion than Marea serves. I didn’t think spaghetti worked as well as the fussili did. And the sauce just didn’t have the depth of flavor, nor was it as reduced to a rich, coating sauce as that version had been. It was still good, but not on the same level.

It did get me wondering though, and a quick internet search revealed that this dish isn’t quite as modern made up as I’d surmised. In fact, pasta with red-wine stewed octopus turns out to be a classic Neapolitan dish, Pasta alla Luciana. Sometimes made with white wine, sometimes with red, and it’s usually served with spaghetti, so this version is actually more authentic. The bone marrow seems to be a modern addition, and adds some richness to the sauce – in the Marea version it’s basically melted into the sauce, here at Olivetti, it’s left in a small dice, which is probably a lot of why the sauce doesn’t have that same rich, coating effect. I didn’t pay for the meal, but I know that the above four dishes, plus a bottle of water and a bottle of wine, ran 6700 pesos.

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And, let’s finish off with a new spot here in Recoleta. I reviewed the original Cucina Paradiso, part of the Donato DeSantis “empire”, about nine years ago. I was impressed with the quality, thought the portions were a bit small and expensive, but overall enjoyed it quite a bit. They recently opened a new spot just a couple of blocks from home (it appears they have four locations now – the original in Palermo, one in Caballito, one in Belgrano, and this one). It’s a tiny spot – more store than restaurant, plus some sidewalk seating. It seemed they were doing a lot of takeout business, as well as the store’s offerings.

The place has been getting mixed reviews since it opened, for both service and food. I found the service, while friendly, to be less than attentive. Trying to get anyone’s attention was nearly futile. It took a solid ten minutes to get a menu and about fifteen before anyone returned to take an order. After the main course, it took ten minutes for someone to clear my plate, and almost twenty before someone thought to ask if I wanted dessert or coffee. And they weren’t particularly busy, especially given that they had two waiters handling about ten tables, and were never full.

One of my favorite sort of snacking appetizers is stuffed olives. Typically, they’re small… olive sized… with a nugget of sort of a veal meatball filling in them, then breaded and fried. These were large – about the size of walnuts. And, it turned, out, not because they’d used big olives, but because they’d basically just stuck a piece of olive in with a meatball. Not really stuffed olives. Tasty, no doubt, just not what I was expecting, nor what was really offered. And a bit pricey for nine mini-meatballs at 880 pesos.

Having had, and really liked, the classic “bolognese” lasagna at the original spot (linked above), I decided to go for it again. Nothing remotely the same. This was good, no question, but not at all what I expected. Layers of spinach pasta, sandwiching “the real bolognese sauce, meat with tomato extract cooked down in stock and milk”, which turned out to be a very rich, thick, almost meat and dairy paste, plus a cheesy bechamel, plus grated cheese atop. This was basically like a big block of cheese and milk, with the pasta and meat playing second fiddle. And although I enjoyed it, I have to say, I probably wouldn’t order it again. It just seemed way to heavy on the dairy side of things. 1500 pesos – a bit on the pricey side, although there’s a lot of work that went into it.

When I did finally get dessert and coffee, I was happy. A quite good sfogliatella and good espresso (Lavazza), though 400 pesos for the former and 250 for the latter is steep, even at today’s prices.

They also charge a 190 pesos cubierto, haven’t we gotten over that nonsense yet? Overall, interesting enough, and close enough to home, that although a bit on the pricey side, we’ll go back to try more dishes.