Lunching Like a Brit in Buenos Aires

With the Irishman gone, it's back to my solo Buenos Aires life and I'm back at work on Monday, going for sushi lunch at my favourite little café, Green Eat on Reconquista and Uruguay in the Microcentro.

As a Brit in Buenos Aires, I can't tell you how nice it is to have found a normal little café-type place where I can just lunch-and-go, as it were. The custom here is really to sit down over your lunch and have a larger meal, but I can't shake the lifetime habit of popping in for a sandwich or soup and taking it back to my desk. Or, even better in this sunshine city, sitting outside the café to watch the world go by as I eat.

And Green Eat is just perfect for this. The food is healthy and so delicious. Most days I go for the Sushi con Ensaladita - a few bits of fresh salmon nigiri with four sushi rolls and a delicious side salad. Or, if I'm feeling a bit hungrier, I'll go for one of the woks, such as the Soy de Pollo dish with rice and portobello mushrooms, that comes in a cardboard Chinese takeaway noodle box. Delish, especially for a colder day! The salads are also fantastic here. 

Here's a picture of my favourite sushi box from Green Eat's website:

Sushi con Ensaladita - my fave

My only complaint is that, for someone who starts work early and often wants lunch at 12:00, I find the sushi and salads aren't always ready until 12:30 or so. I guess the locals eat later than me, and a few times I've been turned away disappointed. Nevertheless, this place is always chock-full of ex-pats and tourists speaking English and other languages.

And finally... the coffees are pretty damn good too!

Know your coffee at Green Eat!

 

Teatro Colón and Tô-Sushi

On Saturday night we get dressed up and go to the ballet at the famous and newly refurbished Teatro Colón. At the ripe old age of 29, I have never been to the ballet, and I love it. We are seated way up high up in the theatre and it's a grand experience I'd recommend to anyone. We thoroughly enjoy the ballet and have a glass of champagne at the bar during the interval.

The view from our seats in Teatro Colon

After the ballet, we head to Tô, another sushi restaurant on Costa Rica with Arévalo. Despite having an 11:30pm booking, we are told to wait for a table - it seems they've given ours away - but we get a cocktail while we wait. The place is ultra-trendy with an open bar full of beautiful liquor bottles, behind which the sushi chefs are hard at work. 

The concept of the restaurant is 'Frapanese' - that's French-Japanese, to me and you. There is a young French guy wandering about, but it turns out he is not the owner. 

There are some pretty fancy French-Japanese creations on the menu and we order a big selection. Chef Toufic Reda, from whence the name Tô derives, likes his trio dishes: The Tô Kobe Beef, which includes Kobe beef tartare, Kobe beef 'tataki' and Kobe beef burger, and the Tô tuna, which includes tuna tartare, tuna 'tataki' and seared tuna.

Le Kobe To - Kobe beef tartare, Kobe beef tataki and Kobe beef burger

Le Thon To - red tuna tartare, seared tuna and tuna tataki

I have had Kobe beef in Japan and am expecting it to be absolutely spectacular but I can't say it meets my expectations. It is delicious, but the tartare isn't actually tartare because the melted cheese on top has cooked it, so that is a little disappointing, and the burger is a bit dry. 
 

Langoustine and avocado salad

We also do ourselves over by ordering too-similar dishes, i.e. the tuna tartare with quail's egg, followed by the tuna trio and the steak trio. It is all good, but perhaps a little too much tartare for my liking. (You live and learn...)

Tartare de atun como lo hace Toufic - red tuna tartare with wasabi, 'fake caviar' and the quail's egg yolk

Had I not been to Osaka and Isabel in recent days and had exceedingly high expectations of Argentine sushi, I think I'd have been more impressed with Tô, but the quality of the food just isn't quite as good. That said, the food is more original and creative and the decor is fun - I'd definitely go again. Unfortunately though, after our late seating, we are the only ones still standing at 2am and felt as if we need to leave. On a Saturday night in Buenos Aires, where people often dine at 11pm and beyond, I would have expected the place to be fuller until later.

Buenos Aires Dining: Osaka

On Friday night, after the football debacle, we decide to treat ourselves to some luxury sushi. I've heard Osaka restaurant come highly recommended and we've booked in advance, which is essential. It's a Peruvian-Japanese sushi and ceviche bar and restaurant located on Soler with Fitz Roy, a few blocks from my place. I've walked past it a ton of times but never been in.

We are greeted at the door by the hostess, who immediately compliments me on my dress, thank you very much (brownie points). She notifies us of the restaurant's policy of only accepting cash, Argentine credit cards or Amex, which is good to know because I'm sure most tourists would be carrying none of the above.

Inside the restaurant, it's dark and moody and very trendy. We order a delicious pisco sour at the cocktail bar and ask to be seated upstairs on the terrace. We get a great seat outside in the small private varanda but before long we realise this is also the smoking area and are joined by several smokers around our table. This calms down after an hour or so though and we're left alone.

I didn't take photos, so this one is from Osaka's website. This is the interior deco of the Puerto Madero branch but the Palermo one is very similar

Osaka has an extensive sushi and ceviche menu with hot dishes and salads to boot. We order a big selection of dishes, including salmon sashimi, 'Carpassion tiraditos' - strips of raw fish with passionfruit and honey and lemon marinade, teriyaki balsamic butter-seared beef fillet, and one of the house ceviches. The food is served beautifully on little white pottery spoons and beautiful plates and it's cooked perfectly. The tastes are mouthwateringly divine and the salmon in particular is some of the best I've ever tasted.

The service lets the place down a little bit as our waiter seems to be new and messes up our order a couple of times, but we have a brilliant night drinking cocktails and gorging ourselves on sushi and hot dishes until our hearts are content. It's so wonderful to be able to sit outside on a warm night and enjoy a stunningly good meal. Osaka is definitely my new favourite.

Buenos Aires Dining: Isabel

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.

Buenos Aires Dining: El Obrero

The Irishman arrives on Friday morning - his 40th birthday - and, typically, for the first day in ages, it pours with rain. He wants to go clothes shopping in Palermo Soho because he came to Buenos Aires four years ago and remembers it as being cheap as chips. I have already assured him about massive inflation and that it's more expensive to buy clothes in Buenos Aires now than it is in London, but he doesn't believe it until he returns to the same stores he went to a few years ago and sees the price tags for himself.

We wander around in the rain for hours and get soaked but we find him a few cool shops, make a few extortionate purchases and finally head to El Obrero for a birthday dinner. El Obrero is one of the more famous restaurants and adorns the pages of every guidebook I've seen, but we've had it recommended to us by various people and we can't wait to try it. We've made a 9pm booking as it books up fast.

We get a taxi to La Boca, which is essential since the area isn't safe to walk around at night. I am way too dressed up for this place in a long, silky, colourful dress but it's a special occasion. El Obrero is packed to the seams, half with tourists and half with the locals. The walls are covered in football regalia, menus and posters and it has a cosy feel.

The photo is from the restaurant's website as I didn't take many of my own

We order celebratory champagne, followed by a bottle of delicious red, and a couple of steaks, medium. We have several enormous side orders and proceed to stuff our faces. The service is simple but the food is absolutely delicious - certainly a perfect 'Welcome to Argentina' meal for the Irishman, and extremely affordable. 50 British pounds for two steaks, one portion of mashed potato, one portion of chips, a salad, two glasses of champagne champagnes, water, bread and a bottle of wine.