food | Kobe | giant metal doors

The Heart Of Buenos Aires

by Joseph Guinto

The decor of all these restaurants tends to vary more than their menus. Most restaurateurs in Palermo prefer to serve food that is true to their roots. Pizza and pasta - brought by those first Italian immigrants - are staples. So are various cuts of beef from the grass-fed cattle of Argentina's endless wide-open spaces. The meat served here, in particular the lomo, or filet mignon, bests high-dollar Kobe beef any day of the week. It is especially good in old-school places like La Cabrera, Social Paraiso, and Lo de Jesus. The last of those is a traditional parilla (steak house), meaning tile floors, black-and-white photos covering the walls, a meat-filled menu, a few dozen of Argentina's still-underrated wines - that kind of thing. On my visit to Lo de Jesus, I opted for the lomo al champignon, which consisted of a French mushroom sauce covering an Argentine filet mignon that, though cooked just on the medium side of medium rare, was so tender, so delicious, that it confused me - I almost spit out my first bite, which would have been a shame. But at $9 for the entrée, I suppose I could have had seconds.

For visitors who want to live life beyond lomo, trendier locales like Mott, Bar Uriarte, and Casa Cruz have sprung up, serving modernized takes on classic Argentine food in settings that would not be out of place in West L.A. or in TriBeCa. Casa Cruz, in either Palermo SoHo or Palermo Hollywood - depending on who is drawing the lines of the sub-subneighborhoods - is the city's most glam restaurant. Enter through the giant metal doors, and you're greeted by an oversize oval-shaped bar that's surrounded by low couches. In all Palermo, this is the place to be seen. Beyond the bar, the dining room offers almost nonexistent lighting, plush seating, red walls (I think - it's very dark), and a techno soundtrack. On the menu are rabbit and seafood, a surprising rarity in this neighborhood. The night we called for a dinner reservation, we were told a table could be available for us a la una - at one a.m. We chose to eat elsewhere.

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food | Kobe | Argentina

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