I just can’t keep up with this guy. Dante Liporace, for those of you who’ve been with me for these years of culinary adventure, we first met at Moreno, a good thirteen years ago. I was impressed with his restraint in the use of molecular gastronomy. He focused on flavor and good cooking, and the modernist elements were touches that accented that, rather than dominated it. I was even more impressed at Tarquino, his epic ode to cow. He was involved with the opening (I’m not clear what his involvement was and or still is) of one of my favorite pizzerias, San Paolo. Then he sort of went out of the local scene as he became the chef at the Casa Rosada, our local equivalent of the White House. But he was shortly back with the casual Bourbon, Brunch, and Beer, about four years ago. Since then, he’s opened Uptown Bar, Trade (and Sky Bar), Mercado de Liniers (a second location in Ushuaia coming soon), Molusca (both in BA and Pinamar, on the coast), and Airport Bar.

I hadn’t been to any of them. I first had the idea that I’d go to each of them and then come up with some sort of composite post about the juggernaut of restaurants that represent Dante. We’re casual friends these days, we don’t know each other well, but enough to be friendly online and in person when we meet. But as I thought about it, and my connection to him, that just looked like an overwhelming fluff job of some sort in the offing. And I’m not sure that all of the spots are even on my “I should try this place” list, particularly the bars. But we shall see in the future. For now, let’s look at his flagship restaurant, Mercado de Liniers, Gorriti 6012, Palermo.

Let’s get one thing out of the way, as I’m sure local folk are going to decry… the price. I knew going into this that the place is expensive. By local standards. It’s a splurge. Until recently, there was one and only one option, an extensive tasting menu that ran 16,000 pesos. As of a couple of weeks ago, perhaps those cries were heard, and there are now three tasting menus available, currently running 7,500 for 5 courses, 11,500 for a different 5 courses, to 18,000 for 8 courses. That includes bread, bottled water, and coffee, but not wine. It also, as it turns out, includes things like several amuse bouche courses before you ever get started, and a pre-dessert round. But I can’t really scream “expensive” when we charge essentially the same at Casa SaltShaker.

The room is cavernous, I think it’s about three stories high, with a huge bar around the kitchen, some tables surrounding that, and a mezzanine over one end with more tables. In a slightly different approach to service from many “kitchen bar” spots, the chefs don’t interact with the customers. I tried, and couldn’t get much more in conversation out of any of them other than a smile, nod, and mumbled thanks when complimented. So even though the food is prepared right in front of you, a waiter picks it up from the kitchen counter, walks out and around of the kitchen, to bring it from behind you, serve it, and explain the dish.

And in a truly bizarre moment, I had a question about one ingredient at one point – the waitress standing next to me, the chef who prepared it standing in front of me, he wouldn’t answer me, she walked all the way back around, approached him (still right in front of me), asked him the question, he answered, but so quietly I couldn’t hear him, and she walked all the back around to my side in order to tell me his answer. That’s just weird. It’s not even good or proper service. Other than that, service was delightful, and I like the atmosphere. At lunchtime it’s really quiet, there were only five customers in the place, but apparently at night it gets quite busy.

I ordered the top end menu. It was intended as a splurge lunch. It begins with two excellent breads, particularly the olive bread which is almost popover style.

A first amuse, a vegetable and bone marrow pakora topped with steak tartare. Brilliant start, just bring me a platter of these and I’ll be happy.

Roasted vegetable broth. Four spheres – celery, onion, bell pepper, mango. Instructions to eat the spheres together and then drink the broth. The spheres did nothing for me, the broth was good. Maybe I was supposed to hold the spheres in my mouth when drinking the broth and let it all dissolve together?

And a third amuse! Also excellent, the base of this cappucino is a reduced osso buco braising liquid topped with a potato foam, cocoa and espresso powders. Now that’s a winter warmer! I’d take a mug of that.

There’s going to be a lot of “surf and turf” ideas here in this menu. This one a bed of stracciatella cheese with crispy cornalitos (fried smelt) and strips of crispy veal tongue. Accented by pickled onions and a plum broth. I liked this one a lot.

 

Mmm… slightly disappointed with this one. Smoked provoleta, topped with a “sea egg”, which turned out to be just an egg with some salmon or trout roe scattered on it, and I didn’t quite get the apple and celery broth. The bits of cauliflower and walnuts and the Italian fish sauce were… nice. It wasn’t a bad dish, just didn’t quite do it for me.

This was actually a dish from the mid-level menu that I was oggling while trying to decide which menu I was going to order. Dante had the chefs send me this one in the middle of the big menu as an extra. It sounded great – sweetbreads in onion broth with a creamy cheese sauce, pecorino bechamel fritter, walnuts and thyme gel. The one thing not mentioned in the description is that the cheese sauce is a curry cheese sauce. Unfortunately, I found the curry powder to be so overwhelming I couldn’t taste anything but that flavor. I ended up eating the sweetbread side of the dish and the little balls of fried bechamel and leaving the sauce.

Oxtail ravioli. Crispy fried squid. Tangerine cured salmon. Vegetable broth. What’s not to like? It all worked together really well.

Roasted grouper topped with confited tomato, a “matrimonio” croquette (I think it was explained what the “marriage” was in the croquette, but I don’t remember) over a sort of mushroom pate. Kind of two disparate dishes on one plate. I don’t think they go together, but eaten separately they were quite good.

Risotto, not entirely sure of what. Saffron “air”, parmesan cream, chañar molasses spheres (it’s a fruit from northern Argentina), and a bit of grilled tomato. Very good, decently made risotto (not quite as liquid or loose as I’d like, but easier to make a pretty circle), albeit I have to say it paled in comparison to the risotto al nero di seppia I’d just made two days before….

Slow cooked pork breast “a la Villeroy” of calamari… what? “A la Villeroy” is a classic cooking technique where you coat the meat in a thick bechamel sauce, then bread it and fry it. I see the bechamel sauce, perhaps it had some calamari in it? But nothing coated and fried. Not sure what the thicker, dark sauce is, I think it had some orange in it. And that part of the dish was delicious. The little salad of pickled “Thai mushrooms” with both raw and crispy bacon was kind of odd and I mostly just poked at it.

When I think pre-dessert, I think “palate cleanser”. The idea usually is to clear out those savory, rich flavors and prepare your mouth for the sweet stuff. Cotton candy with olive oil dripped over it just doesn’t do that. I mean, it was just fine cotton candy, and I like the olive oil touch, but it felt out of place, and I just took one nibble and then pushed it aside. A mouthful of sugar was not what I wanted at that point.

On the other hand, the baked cheese tart was, though not as creatively presented or conceived as the other dishes on the menu, my favorite thing I ate. Well, maybe those pakora at the beginning. In fact, yes, give me a meal of a half dozen of those pakora, washed down with my mug of osso buco cappucino, and finish with this tart, and I’m golden. Perfectly cooked, great flavor, accented by dark chocolate sauce (a little more of that please), and a tangerine gelato. And that’s saying something, because I don’t usually go in much for desserts. This was, by the way, the only time I got one of the chefs to speak to me, when I complimented him on the tart, and he turned bright red, mumbled “gracias”, which earned him a glare from the next chef over, at which point he sort of ran to the other side of the kitchen and just stood there.

I knew there was another dessert coming, so it was surprising to first get an espresso and a petit four of whisky filled chocolate. And that they waited until I’d finished that to bring the final dessert. I kind of want my coffee as the last thing.

This is actually a dessert from the mid-range menu, which Dante thought I’d prefer over the one on the highe end menu as a final touch. It’s basically a big, airy, fried doughnut filled with vanilla gelato, served over a port-infused dulce de leche. It was quite good, but the cheese tart was better.

Okay, whew. First off, too much food. Even had I not had the extra course in the middle and the bigger final dessert, it would have been too much food. I liked everything in the sense that nothing wasn’t good, nothing was “I never want to eat that again”. There were dishes I liked more than others. Interestingly, I think it’s the simpler dishes that stood out for me – the three I mentioned just above in particular. Though as I thought about it, that’s been true for me at each of his restaurants – the morcilla and chorizo risotto at Moreno, both the tongue with salsa criolla and mixed offal platter with onion gravy at Tarquino, the bagel with smoked salmon at Bourbon, Brunch, and Beer, the pizzas at San Paolo. Whether that’s more my tastes just run towards the simpler and more direct, or he’s just better at creating those dishes, I can’t say.

And wrapping it up with the price. All told, with a glass of wine and a tip, 22,000 pesos. Now, at official exchange rate, which is, for non-locals, what you’d pay if you used a credit card, you’re going to get dinged for US$160-165. And no, it’s not worth that. It’s just too expensive for Argentina. But, if you pay in cash, after exchanging your money at the blue rate, as I did, when I went it was about $66, though the peso has resurged slightly and it’s more like $75 now. And yes, it’s worth that. For a now and again splurge.