Address: 234 Jervois Road
Ph: (09) 360 0678
Web: buenosairesrestaurant.co.nz
Cuisine: Argentinian
Rating: 6/10
About this time every year I begin to hanker after the taste of meat flamed over a barbecue. Nothing says summer is on its way more than that char-grilled flavour. And there's a whole country that agrees with me - Argentina. Famous for their passion for grilled meats and tango dancing, these guys know how to set up a backyard party like no other.
Well now the party has come to town. Buenos Aires restaurant has relocated from Clarks Beach - where the team has been serving up a Latin-style dining experience since 2007 - to Jervois Rd.
The entrance to the restaurant is dominated by the Argentinian-style "parrilla", an open wood-fire grill where the two grill chefs are kept busy amid dancing flames, flying sparks and glowing embers. Immediately the tantalising smell of flame-grilled meat cooking put my salivary glands into overload.
Beyond, the dining room was not quite so dramatic. With an awkward shape and a table set-up that makes for a disjointed ambience, it's not an easy space to make work. But once seated, the warm welcome of owner Tomas Tonnelier soon had us focusing on the task at hand - ordering food before I started dribbling with the aroma coming from the parrilla.
With the staff all Argentinian, a wine list dominated by Argentine wines and the aforementioned parrilla, the evening was shaping up to be an authentic experience.
The menu, however, confused us. There were entrees and mains, both from the grill and from the kitchen, and while all dishes had Argentinian names,, some didn't appear to "fit".
Crumbed camembert with cranberry sauce? Roasted potatoes stuffed with blue cheese? How about eye fillet wrapped in Italian prosciutto? Not for us thanks. We were going for Argentine cuisine all the way.
From the grill, we ordered an entree of choripan, the Argentinian equivalent of our sausage in bread, but much, much better. For a start the sausage is made with course ground spicy meat and, forget tomato sauce, this little number comes with a bowl of chimichurri sauce - olive oil, chilli, garlic, and herb - to dip your sausage sammy into. Eating this I wanted all the sausage sizzles in New Zealand to convert to Argentinian style immediately.
Our other starter of chicken livers cooked with sauteed onion, mushroom and black pepper, was hearty and delicious. The livers were cooked perfectly pink, ensuring there was no hint of that granular dryness you get from overcooked livers. However, the inexperience of some of the staff began to show when we were given saucers to use as side dishes and asked if we'd like fresh cutlery to use for our mains when they cleared our starters. Hopefully these teething problems can be easily fixed.
There was never any question that we'd choose mains from the list of those cooked on the grill. It was tira de asado (short ribs) for me, and though I tried to get my dining companion to order the flank steak, I couldn't convince her that any chewiness would be outweighed by the tastiness and she ordered the scotch fillet instead. This came as a massive 400g cut wrapped in bacon, and was tender enough to render the steak knife almost redundant.
My short ribs were a different story. The rule is that the more work the meat does on the animal, the tougher and tastier it'll be and this was certainly true here. The ribs required a fair bit of chewing but the meat was full of flavour, licked and singed by the flame, pink and juicy throughout.
Each main comes with the choice of two sides, from the list of salads and guarniciones (side dishes). We ordered a couple of simple salads as well as some papas frites provenzal (fries with garlic and parsley) and a traditional potato salad, ensalada rusa. They were adequate but nothing special. The fries had a barely detectable sprinkling of what could have been a store-bought herb salt and the mayonnaise in the ensalada rusa didn't taste homemade.
Seeing creme flan and churros con chocolate on the menu proved irresistible to us. Presented in spectacular fashion, sadly they didn't live up to their appearance. The flan was overcooked and thus separated. Even worse, it was served with synthetic Dairy Whip-like cream. Conversely, the churros were undercooked and even the excellent chocolate sauce couldn't entice us to eat many of them.
Buenos Aires has the making of a good, affordable night out if they can focus more on providing good quality traditional Argentinian fare without the shortcuts, and eliminate dishes that serve only to dilute the authenticity of this Latin-style eatery.
From the menu: Chicken livers $13, Choripan $8, Scotch fillet $33, Short ribs $29, Churros $12, Flan $12.
Drinks: Fully licensed.
