A Night on the Town

I have a colleague at work, who has Argentine parents. So I asked him what eating establishments I should try while in Buenos Aires. He said that I had to eat in a Parilla (pronounced pareesha).  This seems to be some sort of barbecue/steakhouse. Pablo said that Argentine beef was the best in the world. His manager, Claudio (who is from Brazil), overheard us and insisted that Argentine beef was only the second best beef in the world, after Brazilian beef. Since I will only have the opportunity to try Argentine beef on this vacation, I won't be able to settle their argument for them.
After some research, Denise and I had agreed on a place called Don Julio. Unfortunately, we totally forgot that it was Valentine's day and all the restaurants were likely to be fully booked this evening. The concierge at the desk did his best, but Don Julio had no tables available. After some more research we settled on a place called Cabanas Las Lilas, which could fit us in as long as we ate early (6.30pm).  It's worth noting that most Argentines don't eat until 9-10pm. Several restaurants don't seem to open until 7 or 7.30, and stay open until the early hours of the morning.

We started off with a plate of cured meats and fish, with various breads. The waitress recommended the special which was a huge cut of rib eye for 2 people to share. I had spent some time swotting up on the various Spanish words for how I wanted my meat cooked, but before I could impress anyone by ordering it "Jugoso", the waitress (who didn't really speak English that well) offered it "pink", so I just nodded my head.  The first thing I noticed was that there was no salt on the table. Dariel wouldn't like it - but you don't adulterate meat like we had by putting salt on it. I'd been told that Argentines were big on meat, not salads, and their idea of a salad was to take some lettuce and throw a lot of oil and salt on it to make it taste as much like meat as possible. Since I'm not a big salad person to start with, and my doctor had advised against eating any uncooked vegetables anyway, this didn't bother me.  I was quite happy to have my meat accompanied by a fine bottle of Malbec.

 For dessert there were many choices with dulce de leche. In the end we both settled on the dulce de leche crepes. They were exquisite.

Some restaurants bring you mints with the cheque, but here at Cabanas Las Lilas they bring you a tray with limoncello and grappa. So we did limoncello shots to finish the meal off.

After all that Denise and I staggered back to the hotel room with very full stomachs. I do hope we'll be able to get up in the morning as we have a full day's sight seeing ahead of us.