I’m going to take a break from Bite Marks for a bit and just post some short reviews as they come up – longer than the Bite Marks ones, but in general, shorter than full on reviews.
HB, Pacheco de Melo 2001, Recoleta – taking over the space vacated recently by the quite good café, Tips Bakery & More, which took over the space from a terrible fusion sushi bar, Kankei (that I never bothered to write up it was so bad, and thankfully also short-lived), which took over the space from the eclectic, but not all that interesting, Pacheco (also never written up), which took over from a decent pasta place, Oliverio. There was also a vague attempt at opening some sort of sandwich shop delivery service (maybe called Colo?) in between Kankei and Tips that I don’t think ever actually opened – it was under renovation when we went on vacation and by the time we came back three weeks later had been abandoned again. All in the 12 years we’ve lived around the corner from the location. [Closed in early to mid 2020, victim of the Covid-19 shutdown]
One of those locations that for whatever reason, despite being a corner location in the heart of a good neighborhood, seems to be cursed for restaurants. If I’ve got my facts right, this place is a new branch of a burger spot from La Plata.
This place offers up burgers, sandwiches, and “artisanal beer”. I don’t give it long. First, there are just too many places in the ‘hood for that kind of stuff these days, and second, it’s just not very good. A massive, doughy bun hides a wan, oblong patty of meat that stretches from one side to the other on one axis, but only about 2/3 of the way on the perpendicular. If you’re going to go with round buns, go with round patties. If you’re going to go with oblong patties, go with an oblong bun. The patty is barely a centimeter thick – if the whole thing weighs in at 4 ounces I’d be surprised. And needless to say, at that thickness, the requested rare to medium rare cooking is difficult. Or, in this case, impossible, as the burger came out to the table in under four minutes from the time I ordered it – which means it had been precooked and just heated up. It was well done, chewy, and, extraordinarily salty. The “feta cheese” was not feta – it was “a feta” of cheese, a homonym referring to “a slice” – it was some sort of tasteless pale yellow cheese (normally phrased as queso feteado, queso en feta, or feta de queso, but not just queso feta). The fries are not much better – though beautifully golden brown they were so overdone they were crunchy through and through.
As the burger comes in combo with the fries and a soft drink (what would be a quite reasonable 125 pesos, or $6 and change, at lunch, if it was a good burger), they don’t offer an option for substituting onion rings, which are my preferred side to a burger. So, I ordered them up separately (100 pesos, $5), which arrive as a lovely pile of half a dozen beautiful rings. The batter is crunchy and nicely seasoned – but oh, the onions…. at least on my portion, these were all rings from the outside of the onion – one of them even include the skin of the onion inside! As such they were dry and chewy. And the “aioli” was a grainy, almost cheesy sort of dip that was just unpleasant. Thankfully, they have some nice condiments available – a slightly spicy ketchup, a decent mustard, some mayo, and a cilantro sauce. Unfortunately, none of those condiments could make up for the mediocrity of what they were covering. The claim of artisanal beer is more or less laughable given the number of real craft beer bars in the area – they offer the usual suspect commercial beers in bottle, and as best I could tell, two beers from Cerveza Mola on tap. In their combos, only the industrial beers are available.
Pass. Let’s move on to whoever’s going to take over the space next. Quickly. Please.
