On Saturday night, we're going for a more sophisticated night and we head to Isabel on Uriarte, Palermo Soho. The entrance is two enormous gold double doors and we walk through a reception room to a huge, long, dark room with leather booths and an incredibly designed roof. The website says the bar and restaurant only accepts payment in Isabelinas, the venue's own currency, so I'm a bit disappointed when this turns out not to be the case and we aren't allowed to buy chips at the door. I suspect inflation may have played a part in the demise of the Isabelina.
We have made a booking for 10:30pm so I'm disappointed when we're shoved into the smallest booth at the entrance of the place. We have a good view of everyone else but we're not really in the heart of the action. Worse still, the air conditioning is on arctic mode and I'm wearing a skimpy dress like all the other women in the place, and I'm freezing throughout our stay. I ask one of the mardy cocktail waitresses if they can turn it down and I'm met with a fairly rude, "Computer Says No"-style answer.
We take a look around and visit the outdoor smoking area, which has a roaring fire and is pretty cool, but it's far away from our seats and it's cold out as well as in, so we don't hang around.
We order champagne cocktails, which are delicious. The food menu is very simple and mostly consists of sushi dishes so we order salmon sashimi, some incredible sashimi concoctions called tiraditos and a few different types of sushi rolls. The food is 10 out of 10 - original, mouthwatering and bursting with flavour. The service, however, is more like a 5, letting the place down badly. It's not that they don't know what they're doing, they're just super-snobby and we get completely ignored, despite the fact that we're paying customers and we're smartly dressed. The staff are pretty rude and it's a real shame because the interior is so stylish, the place so cool and the food so tasty.
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