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.