The town of Olivos, just north of the city limits of Buenos Aires, was originally known as Parajes de los Olivos, or the Place of the Olive Trees. It’s a small suburb of about 80,000 people, and let’s say that the demographic skews… upscale. The presidential residence is located in town, along with a whole lot of other mansion type homes. A trio of us from the Roving Ravenous Horde headed up that way for the first lunch of this month.
The place? 1636, located at Corrientes 421. The name of the restaurant is the local postal code. The place came to my attention through a local food writer, who wrote about a new opening from Grupo Mezcla, the restaurant group behind such gems as Casa Cavia, Orno, and La Panaderia de Pablo, the last of which was the former occupant of this space. It’s a bright, airy space. It didn’t get particularly busy – in fact, fairly empty most of the lunch hour. Waitstaff are friendly, but not overly efficient.
After ordering, the meal began with a bowl of bread – one roll per person – accompanied by pickled red cabbage. Now, the former were delicious, the latter was… fine. A request for some butter or olive oil to accompany the rolls was met with “we’ll have to consult on what we can do”. What? And nothing was forthcoming, until once again flagging down the same waitress, who said, “oh, the butter never arrived?” Well no, you didn’t bring it. It doesn’t happen by magic. A few minutes later, a different waiter brought a small dish of… hummus, explaining that the restaurant will not serve butter or olive oil to guests. What? The hummus was… fine. Bottled water, ordered at the same time as the food, didn’t arrive until just before the appetizers… the waiter… forgot.
On these pages, we’ve encountered the mbeyu, a Paraguayan flatbread made from cassava (yuca) flour, cheese, egg, and milk a trio of times (Casa Felix, Ña Eustaquia, and at a street fair). That’s also the number of times I’d had one. This one is offered up topped with smoked trout, “yoguth”, avocado, and fresh herbs. It sounded interesting. It didn’t sound quite as small as it turned out to be – that disc is maybe four inches across, and rings it at 1600 pesos ($13). That’s pricey, even for smoked trout. Maybe it’s the “yoguth”…. It was also, despite all the herbs, and some slices of pickled caperberry, pretty bland, and the mbeyu itself was dry and flavorless.
The other appetizer we tried fared only somewhat better. The roasted Japanese eggplant (half of a medium sized one, and half of a really small one) basted in a miso vinaigrette, was delicious. The dried out, yet oily, basmati rice with sesame seeds sprinkled over it was a fail. And 1300 pesos ($10.65)? We’re heading into unhappy camper territory here.
The best dish of the lunch, and the only one I’d venture any of us would order again, spinach stuffed tortellini with chard, walnuts, fried garlic chips, and smoked provolone. Absolutely delightful, and maybe even worth the 1700 pesos ($14). Pricey for Argentina, but probably not for Olivos, and certainly no more than some of our other favorite “nicer” pasta places around town.
1636 has been touted for its “milanesa” style chops. We were a bit put off by the whopping 3500 peso ($29) price tag, especially when our waiter asserted it “wasn’t very big, just okay for one person”. And yeah, other than leaving the long rib bone with attached fat on it, this was a pretty damned small pork chop. It was nicely fried, but it was completely devoid of seasoning, and cooked so far into the well done area that it would have benefited from rehydration before eating it. The unseasoned potato millefeuille was little better. The only thing on the plate of interest was the seeded mustard. The overly sweet confited garlic puree just didn’t do it for us. Though hey, that might have been nice with the bread rolls.
In for a centavo, in for a peso, as they say… we ordered the other high end dish on the menu, the bife de chorizo, or tenderloin steak, with its accompanying crispy Jerusalem artichokes and pebre sauce, which is sort of the Chilean version of salsa criolla, usually made with tomatoes, garlic, and a hint of chili, in olive oil and vinegar. It comes in at 3000 pesos ($25), making it one of the more expensive steaks we’ve had. Ordered rare to medium rare, it came out completely well done and chewy. It was semi-sliced – as in, they cut partway through, so it looks sliced, but it’s only cut partway through, so we had to still cut it ourselves. It’s smothered in what could only be called gravy in the loosest sense of the word – if I were to guess, it’s a little bit of insipid stock thickened with cornstarch to a shiny, gloppy, bad-takeout Chinese food consistency. The salsa pebre lacked the slight kick of chili, being basically just chopped tomatoes, a little green onion and some sort of dried herb, in oil. Not even sure there was any vinegar, nor salt, to give it some flavor. The crispy Jerusalem artichokes were good, especially with a little of the mustard from the other dish. It’s a tossup which of these last two dishes was worse. We didn’t finish either of them.
It’s been awhile since the Horde has had this spectacular of a fail in a place we went to eat. And made more painful not just by the whopping cost for mediocre or worse food, but by the fact that it comes from a restaurant group whose other restaurants are among some of the better restaurants in and around the city. This needs some serious work – both in service and food. Until, no, unless that happens, this one’s on my “Not Recommended” list.
