Sun, Steak, Sushi & Other Stuff I'll Miss About Buenos Aires

Tomorrow - St. Patrick's Day, not insignificantly - I'm moving to Ireland. With it, I'm swapping Buenos Aires's Puente de la Mujer bridge for Dublin's Samuel Beckett; Malbec for Guinness (bleurrgh) and 30˚C sunshine for 5˚C sideways rain ... Can you tell I'm slightly apprehensive?

Spot the difference - Puente de la Mujer in Buenos Aires (top) and the Samuel Beckett bridge in Dublin (bottom)

I've lapped up my last bit of sunshine, nuzzled down a final few steaks at the likes of La Cabrera, had my last few bites of South American sushi at Sipan Palermitano and I'm about to spend my last night as a resident of beautiful Palermo Hollywood. It's fair to say I'll miss this place, so here's a little list of just a few of the things I'm sad to say goodbye to...

1. Steak (bife de chorizo, bife de lomo, La Cabrera, Miranda, El Obrero, to name but a few)

2. Sushi (Osaka, Tô, Sipan, Green Eat)

3. Sunshine (sunrise, sunset, scorching heat, all day, every day...)

4. Speakeasy bars (Frank's, 878, Oasis Clubhouse... shame I didn't get to sample more of them)

5. Street art (Dorrego area, Palermo Hollywood)

6. Wine (Malbec, Mendoza...)

7. Havanna (coffee, alfajores, Havannets...)

8. Running in the Bosques de Palermo (lazy Palermo Sundays, the Buenos Aires marathon, 10k runs in the park)

9. Shopping in Palermo Soho (too many places to name, and all way too expensive...)

10. Brunch (Oui Oui, Miranda, Olsen)

Steak. Just one of the many things I'll miss

And a few things I won't...

1. The subte (people attempting to pickpocket me on the subte/ getting squashed into someone's sweaty armpit on the subte/ the subte breaking down and not letting me off)

2. Getting lost (in the rain/ on the wrong side of the train tracks/ on streets with no street signs)

3. The oppressive heat of my apartment with its tragic lack of air conditioning (the only relief being the ceiling fan that looks so decrepit I have to sleep with one eye open to avoid getting my head chopped off mid-slumber)


4. Getting hissed and panted at by pervy businessmen and pervy workmen (on the way to work/ on the subte/ at conferences/ in interviews...)

5. Going out late (and eating dinner no earlier than 11pm/ not being able to go to a bar before 3am/ being out past 12 on a school night). Roll on 6pm dinners and 11pm pub closes!


Yep, this is it. Buenos Aires, I'll miss you.

Buenos Aires Sushi: Dashi & Ceviche

Despite the fact that Buenos Aires is dead in January, I manage to find a few food highlights to keep me going for the month:

Ceviche (Costa Rica, 5644, Palermo)

This Peruvian ceviche restaurant in Palermo Hollywood, right behind my flat, offers 25% discount on food and drink for chicas every Wednesday evening, so I book a table and head there with a group of gal-pals and a lucky token male. We are shown through the chic main restaurant, decorated with paintings, before being seated out the back in a leafy, decked patio area on a big, comfy, oval table.

Firstly, the menu is vast. Obviously, ceviche and sushi are offered in abundance, but there are also plenty of hot dishes, such as lomo salteado, and too many types of sushi rolls to even contemplate choosing from. We order a big selection of some very original creations, including:

Strawberry Roll: Philadelphia cheese, strawberry pieces, smoked salmon and teriyaki sauce

Honey Mustard Roll: Tempura chicken, lettuce and avocado with honey and mustard sauce 

Golden Roll: Philadelphia cheese, langoustine, mango and passionfruit sauce

Photo from Ceviche website

Ceviche certainly isn't cheap, but the 25% ladies' night discount makes it worthwhile and I'm well-impressed with the selection on offer and the quality of the food. I'll definitely go back!

Dashi Sushi (Fitz Roy, 1613, Palermo Hollywood)

A couple of days after my Ceviche experience, a friend gets in touch to say that a young couple he knows are visiting Buenos Aires and they want to meet up with ex-pats, so I agree to meet them for dinner at Dashi Sushi. It's a curious arrangement, as I don't know the couple in question, I'll probably never see them again, and they arrive 20 minutes late, but they turn out to be brilliant fun and it's great to have English-speaking company over good food.

Dashi Sushi has a tricky job, being located just a few minutes' walk from both Osaka and Ceviche, two of the best Peruvian restaurants in the area, and it doesn't help itself much by maintaining prices just as high as its rivals. As a consequence, the dim-lit restaurant is pretty empty, and lacks the atmosphere and ambience of Osaka and Ceviche.

Photo from Dashi's website

The food and cocktails are great at Dashi but the service just isn't as friendly, nor the atmosphere as good, as that of Osaka, and it's just too pricey to justify choosing it again over one of its superior rivals. Would I go back? Yes, I would, but it definitely wouldn't be my first choice.

The upside, of course, is that I don't get murdered by the two random strangers I meet there for dinner. Happy days.