A grab bag of different cuisines and, for a change in Bite Marks, most all of it quite good! That makes me happy. Does it make you happy?
Fuku Temakeria, somewhere…. As best I’ve been able to determine, this sushi place is delivery only, they don’t seem to have a public physical location. There is a Fuku Temakeria in Avellaneda, to the southeast of the city of BA, but that’s not where my delivery guy picked up my order and pedaled his bike to my house. If so, he’d have deserved far more than Glovo paid him or I tipped him. And, at least according to the cute little map that they provide during the delivery process, he was somewhere, vaguely, over in the Palermo/Villa Crespo area for the pickup.
I ordered, as you can see, one maki and four temaki, a classic roll and four hand rolls – and went out of my way to pick ones without cream cheese. Nonetheless, the classic roll came with cream cheese – not mentioned on the menu – I went back and checked. Ah well. But, the fish, nice and fresh, good combinations in the hand rolls, I’d happily order these again. All of them run from 96-115 pesos apiece, so, hovering around $3 each.
Gerald’s Fried Chicken Place, Costa Rica 5545, Palermo – continuing in my search for good fried Chicken in town, I basically did a Google map search for “fried chicken”, “pollo frito”, and “pollo broaster”, and marked off places that showed up, to be gotten to eventually. It happened that I was relatively nearby for a consulting job, and decided to give it a shot. Gleaming new, done up in Halloween black and orange (all the chairs carefully alternated at each table). It’s fairly dark inside, though there’s seating out front and a patio in the back. The counter to order from is towards the back of the place – a kind of odd design, as you have to walk through one seating area, past the bathrooms and a stairway heading to an upstairs area, and you still can’t see the counter until you’re past all those, because it’s tucked behind a wall back by the kitchen. You place your order and are given one of those more and more ubiquitous hockey pucks that vibrate and buzz when your order’s ready. They fry to order here, and warn you it will be about 15 minutes… it was more like 25, despite being the only order they were making at the time.
So, what I liked most about the leg-thigh combo were the fries and the coleslaw. (230 pesos/$6.25 without beverage.) The former are cut in a long, sort of channel, or canoe shape, and are nicely crispy on the outside, soft on the inside, as they should be. The latter, for a change here in BA, not sweet, but made “right”. The two mini-arepas were just okay – kind of chewy. The dipping sauce for the chicken is a big pass – basically tasted like a honey-garlic salad dressing. So, on to the main event, the chicken. First off, over-fried, you can see it’s bordering on burnt in places. The chicken inside was still juicy, but unseasoned. My guess is they don’t marinate it or brine it, or even dust it with some spices before coating it in flour and egg – I’d guess, double coated. And the coating is seasoned, as best I could tell, with just salt, and just edging to too much. The skin and batter aren’t really crispy, they’re kind of chewy, like the arepas, which is odd, especially given how darkly fried they are – I can only guess that the oil temperature is too low. So, I’m not wowed, but I ate it all, and loved the fries and coleslaw. It gets an “okay”. Alright, so not everything this time around was a winner. They claim this as “American style fried chicken”, though my bet is that this is really more of a Venezuelan (or maybe Colombian) interpretation of that. Yes, yes, I know those are both in the Americas, but I’m taking their claim as referring to more traditional U.S. norteamericano style, just from the way they phrase it.
Xilantro Perú Fusión, Sarmiento 95, Martinez. A lazy day trip up to the northern ‘burbs once again. This time, with this spot as my goal. I soloed it, as no one seemed interested in the adventure. Their loss! I’ve been hearing about this place for a long time now, and remember, vaguely, sampling something they had at a stand at one of the Peruvian street fairs and liking it a lot. Maybe I should have made it one of the Horde outings. Nice place, well decorated, light and airy, indoor and outdoor seating. Friendly greetings from the staff, including a welcome and handshake from the waiter. That’s different.
Now, usually, these days, when someone calls a place Peruvian fusion, they’re talking nikkei cooking – fused with Japanese, and there are a bunch of creative sushi rolls and such. Not here. In fact, other than offering some tiraditos, which are ceviches done in a sashimi cut, I didn’t see anything on the menu that seemed to be a fusion with any other cuisine.
Ceviches are noted as a specialty of the house. I immediately spotted one that was an octopus and salmon one, though the waiter had already advised me that the chef didn’t like the salmon that had come in that morning and had sent it back. I asked what they were subbing in, and he said, lenguado, or sole. That’s even better – I’m not that big of a fan of salmon in ceviche. This was excellent. Beautifully seasoned, generous portion (it better be, given that they charge a whopping 550 pesos or $15 for an individual sized ceviche). And both the standard ajicito (not very spicy that one), and pureed rocotos (yum!) on the side.
Though generous, I was still hungry. Not enough for a main course, but an appetizer sounded good. Anticuchos mixtos, coming as a trio of brochettes, chicken, pork shoulder, and veal, sounded perfect. And once again, excellent. Some of the best anticuchos I’ve had around here. And again, quite generous, especially with the potatoes, corn, etc. (350 pesos, about $9.50).
Overall, I like the place a lot. It’s expensive, like La Mar or Osaka expensive, without being as creative. I’m guessing the price level is attributable to the neighborhood, being a wealthier suburban area. But it was a nice treat, and some really good food!
The weekly Roving Ravenous Horde outing was upon us, and this time we headed out to Labor Rotisería & Provisions, Ramón Freire 1501, in Colegiales. It’s a place I’ve walked by quite a few times, and it turned out the rest of the foursome who came had passed it by many a time as well. It always looked intriguing, I’m not sure why I never stopped in. Remedied!
Much of the menu comes from the wood fired oven right there at the bar, and this is definitely a meat-centric place. The food is generally Argentine, but with some nice creative twists here and there, and a few dishes that have influences from other places in the world – like a hummus platter, or the day’s special, a chicken curry.
Whenever I see olives and bread as something you have to order if you want on the table, I start to wonder if the place is a rip-off, I mean, dump some olives out of a jar into a bowl, and stick some of BA’s ubiquitous cotton-ball bread on the table, and hit us with a 90 peso charge? But, oh… these are house cured black olives, pits removed, and cured in lemon and thyme, and they’re outstanding. As is the elongated football of a bread (all breads are baked in-house). And then there were the empanadas, of which we had two rounds – coming in four varieties – a ricotta, spinach, walnut and portobello; a ham and cheese with a not the usual suspects cheese gooey and melty inside; a barbecued chicken with a bbq sauce that was beautifully balanced; and the star, the tapa de asado ahumada – basically the cap of meat over the shortrib, smoked, and kind of the house specialty, and completely awesome. I almost picked up half a dozen of those to go when we left. All the empanadas run 42-44 pesos apiece.
A short section of the menu is entitled La Ganga del Mediodía, the “noon bargain”, and consists of a choice of several of their main course meats (which come in a 1/4 kg portion), served in a 1/8 kg portion with a choice of several side dishes, for a mere 175 pesos. Two of our number selected the bondiola, pork shoulder, slow-cooked rotisserie style on a spit. They did differ on their side dish choices, potatoes and sweet potatoes. Very good, though both noted that the meat wasn’t quite as hot as they would have liked.
The claim to fame smoked shortrib meat, served up with a side of coleslaw – just as good as in the empanada.
And, a six-day cured and then smoked pastrami in sandwich form. One of the better pastrami sandwiches I’ve had here, with bread and butter pickles that were sharp rather than sour, and a housemade whole grain mustard, and… actual rye bread. I did think the amount of meat on the sandwich was a little skimpy, given that the sandwich is priced as a main course, but has the quantity of one of the lunch specials. 260 pesos.
A round of beers on tap. All the above food. Generous tip. And we headed out sated for 1920 pesos, 480 apiece, or $13. Any of us would happily go back!
And just finishing with a small note – we wandered down to Av. Cabildo after lunch to grab a gelato at Furchi, Av. Cabildo 1508, a local gelato spot that’s been there for going on 60 years now, and which I’d never tried, but had been recommended by a few people. Excellent gelato, and some really unique flavors, like poppyseed, negroni, sicilian ricotta, orange-basil-ginger, cheese-sweet potato…. This is definitely going to be a spot to drop in on when I’m in that area and try more flavors.
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