Wednesday 30 November 2011

Las Complejidades de la Pizza: Pizzeria Güerrin - Corrientes 1368, Microcentro / An anonymous bar - Plaza Serrano, Palermo

It seems my last blog post about Ugi's Pizza caused quite a stir among my South American acquaintances. Its appearance on facebook is met with a simple response from a Peruvian friend who has lived in Buenos Aires for over twenty years: "I don't like the Ugi Pizza". Then another comment is forwarded to me: "we used to buy it to take away and eat in the street at 3am when we were goths and poor". Finally, Juan sets me straight. According to Argentine standards, pizza should have a layer of cheese of an equal depth to the base; the tomato sauce should be viewed merely as an afterthought. Here in Argentina, the cheese is all important; but quantity, not quality, is key.


My mistake, it appears, has been to compare Argentine pizza with the Italian version. Where Italian pizza is wafer thin, delicately daubed with tomato sauce and lightly scattered with cheese, its Argentine counterpart is hefty, solid, and weighed down by counterfeit mozzarella. The two are incomparable, rather like comparing sushi with fish and chips. The thousands of Italian immigrants that came to Argentina in the last couple of centuries must have changed the recipe somewhere along the way.


Piles of fainá at Pizzeria Güerrin
So, if I had to name my preferred place for Argentine pizza, I would suggest Pizzeria Güerrin, located on the eastern end of Avenida Corrientes, Buenos Aires' answer to Broadway. Wedged between numerous theatres, it houses a sit-in restaurant as well as a communal stand-up-and-eat-in bar area at the front, perfectly laid out for people-watching. Apart from the ubiquitous cheese-loaded pizza, they sell faína, a typically porteño delicacy which is shaped like a pizza slice, but made from chickpea flour, salt, oil, and not much else. The idea is to place the fainá on top of your pizza slice and eat the two together like a sandwich. Much as I am loathe to admit it, I quite like fainá. It goes down well with an ice-cold glass of beer.


Cheese, glorious cheese
In Plaza Serrano, Palermo, I share a pizza with Juan - once he has finished his complex lesson on the precise ratios of pizza toppings, that is. We are in one of the generic bar-cum-restaurants the square is mostly made up of, and the pizza is also acceptable, but certainly not overwhelming. I am inclined to agree with the general consensus, that pizza is very rarely, if ever, terrible: When it's good, it's really good. When it's bad, it's still pretty good.

Wednesday 23 November 2011

Ugi's Pizza - Carlos Calvo y Chacabuco, San Telmo (and various other locations)


The Cubans would be envious of the minimal, über-communist style of dining mastered by  Ugi’s PizzaYou walk in, order the one and only item available, pay, sit down, eat. Interaction is kept to a bare minimum and usually you find yourself in forlornly deserted surroundings.

I remember the first time I went to Ugi’s on my first visit to Argentina in 2008. My request to see a menu was met with a look of amusement by the server, that and deep contempt. Ugi’s don’t do menus, they don’t do choice (unless you consider choice to be the decision between a whole pizza and a quarter). Ugi’s do mozzarella pizza and nothing else, so you can like it or lump it. As it happens, I like it, and maintain that it is one of the better pizzas in Buenos Aires, despite Argentine friends finding my opinion unbelievable (you know who you are!). The base is doughy and yielding with just enough bite, and the tomato sauce is succulent. Ok, so the cheese is not proper mozzarella, but what do you want for nineteen pesos (£3) a pizza, big enough for two people? (Incidentally, a quarter pizza is charged at 4.75 pesos, exactly a quarter of the price of a whole one; apparently Ugi’s don’t do bulk buy discounts either.)

Surely Argentina is not
experiencing deflation?

There is a running joke among expats and locals alike that Ugi’s prices illustrate the astronomical rate of inflation in the country. Indeed, when I arrived at the end of 2010 a pizza cost sixteen pesos, now at nineteen pesos, the ‘Ugi Index’ is looking a little worrying. In a strange turn of events, when I pass the San Telmo branch at the weekend, I notice the price has dropped to a mere fourteen pesos, thereby throwing the whole theory off course. Surely cause for celebration: I go in to have my quarter pizza slapped on the plastic plate in front of me; no fuss, no bother, just food.



Saturday 19 November 2011

Hausbrot - Avenida Sante Fé 3253, Palermo (and various other locations)

Ok, so I admit, the name of this bakery appeals to my (half) germanic self, but if there is one thing Germans do well it's bread (that and cars, efficiency, terrible Europop and many more things not relevant to this blog...). I discovered it through one of my classmates at Spanish school on my last trip to these shores and have been planning my return. A little about bread in Argentina: it usually ranges from the fresh but tasteless variety you buy in panaderias to the salty, spongy, preservative-filled loaves you find in supermarkets. In other words, Hausbrot is a real exception.
Medialuna 'integral'

Breads range from sunflower seeded and yeast-free to linseed loaves and sesame plaits, all made with integral flour (meaning wholemeal, though the word reminds me of 'integrity', making me feel even more virtuous for choosing it over white bread). They also sell empanadas, packets of nuts, seeds and flour, and plenty of delicious cakes and delicacies that pertain to be healthy because they contain wholemeal flour and/or seeds. For myself, I am willing to play along with this fallacy if it means I have an excuse to sample medialunas (mini croissants), pan dulce con chocolate and muesli cookies in the coming weeks.
Pan zeppelin con girasol

Wednesday 16 November 2011

Sarkis - Thames 1101, Palermo

Sarkis has become somewhat of a holy grail for me. Having failed many times to obtain a reservation, tonight I am determined to eat at Buenos Aires’ most popular Armenian restaurant. In fact, Kate and I have been planning our visit via many excited emails since I booked my flight back to Argentina (I am glad to have friends that share my enthusiasm for food).

Alas, it is fully booked they tell me over the phone, we have to arrive early to have any chance of getting a table. Luckily for us, ‘early’ is a relative concept and by Argentine standards means 8:30pm so Kate and I arrange to meet to put our names on la lista before waiting hopefully, peering through the window at our future fellow diners. Eventually my name gets called, "Su-see?", and we are led to our table in the capacious, unimaginatively furnished room.

You don't come to Sarkis for the décor; you come for the respite from the omnipresent parillas (steak houses) of Buenos Aires. While the interior may be bland, the food is a refreshing antidote to typical porteño dining and therefore it’s an excellent option for vegetarians.

Queso Blanco, Ensalada Beléand Jamba


We order several meze-style dishes: Ensalada Belén, Queso Blanco, Jamba, Falafel all served informally as and when they are prepared, by old-school waiters. The salad is a mixture of fried aubergines and peppers mixed with sultanas, almonds, herbs and spices, salty and sweet, crunchy and yielding in equal measure. The Jamba is a delightful smoky red pepper dip topped with walnuts and leafy herbs and pleasingly oily. The falafel is a little disappointing in its dryness and the Queso Blanco (white cheese) is underwhelming, but both are adequate.

Kate and I have a lot to catch up on, our chatter interspersed by each dish arriving and the topping up of our wine glasses (is there any better sound than the glugging pouring of wine?). At eleven o'clock we start to think about leaving, but at half past we are ordering dessert, feeling relaxed, seduced by the chatter around us. We order a ‘small' ice-cream sundae, but as if to tease us, our waiter brings the larger size, giving us amused knowing looks when he sees us very nearly finish the vast mound of ice-cream, chocolate sauce and booziness.


The 'small' dessert
We are certainly not the last when we finally take our leave at around half past midnight, and this is one of many things that makes me happy to be back in Buenos Aires: the lack of urgency in the bars and restaurants. You can mooch in cafes for several hours barely buying more than a single cup of coffee, and in restaurants you are never told to be out by a certain time. After close to four hours at Sarkis, a hugely popular and busy restaurant, we are never once made to feel like we are overstaying our welcome, and feel nothing less than completely contented throughout the evening. I agree with Kate when she deems it to have been an “epic” dinner; the Holy Grail did not disappoint.

Saturday 12 November 2011

Dadá - San Martín 941, Centro

Day two in Buenos Aires, jet-lagged, disorientated, lethargic, my only hope of feeling vaguely human again is a good dose of iron in the form of steak and red wine (it is my theory that anaemia is non-existent in Argentina, but I have yet to verify it).


Dadá sits on a street of few restaurants or bars, a neighbourhood that seems unpromising at first sight, but then pleasantly surprises. More pop art than dada, the walls are daubed with crude murals replicating sixties art and the lighting is moodily low.


Lomo Dadá
The brusque waitress that greets me, responds firmly in English to my table request in Spanish - I tell myself it is the jet-lag causing me to trip over my words - and I do as I am told, gladly sitting myself down at one of only about eight tables.


Jeff arrives moments later and without much persuasion convinces me to go for the Lomo Dadá, sirloin steak with mustard sauce. "The piece of meat is the size of your head", he tells me. I am promptly sold (sorry veggie friends - I will forward your complaints to Jeff).

Decadent does not begin to describe the dish, one look at it would be enough to give the faint-hearted gout. The meat is beautifully tender and nicely rare by European standards (Argentines tend towards longer cooked meat) and the sauce is piquant and buttery, but not sickeningly so. Potato gratin on the side is decent and not too heavy. Washed down with half a bottle of Malbec (what else?), it is just the tonic I am looking for. Jeff has Bife de Chorizo, a classic cut of beef which is served here atop potatoes and messily piled high with leaves and salsa.


Bife de Chorizo
The location of the restaurant in microcentro means many fellow diners are of the suited and booted variety, but the place doesn't feel corporate or staid. We are impressed by the man in the kipper tie, shaggy hair and side-burns who looks like he might have just stepped out of a seventies police drama.



Disappointingly, we have no room for postre, but I feel sure that I will be back to enjoy the experience again in a more sentient manner once I have recovered from the jet-lag...

Thursday 10 November 2011

My mission begins...

The meat is delicious, the ice-cream is lush, and the countless bakeries of Buenos Aires offer delectable treats in an array of sticky, sweet forms, but all in all, culinary inspiration can be lacking here. Argentina is not the obvious destination for a person who, like me, spends approximately half their waking (and dreaming) life thinking about their next meal. But here I am, in search of enticing food; food that is inspired; restaurants that do not consider salt as an adequate substitute for fresh herbs and spices.

I will sacrifice my dignity to take photos of every plate of food that I consume in a public eatery (thus looking more like a tourist than I already do) and give my unfettered opinion on every mouthful.

Let the eating commence...