![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Argentine Beef
Jun. 16th, 2006 11:14 pmWe went out to a restaurant for dinner tonight. There's a tiny restaurant on Franklin Avenue that I noticed a few months ago, called El Gaucho. It's an Argentine steakhouse, and has a little sign outside that says "Best Steak In Town." The audacity of the claim made me grin the first time I saw it -- we have some really excellent steakhouses in Minneapolis, but they tend to be downtown (not in Seward) and in an entirely different stratosphere for pricing.
El Gaucho serves Argentine and Uruguayan beef. A recent short review in the Star Trib noted that the beef is less tender than American beef, but with much more of a "distinctive beefy flavor," as it is not corn-fed. They also noted that Argentine is #1 in the world for beef consumption.
My father is a Political Scientist, and some years back one of his graduate students wrote a paper on whether it was possible to do fieldwork as a social scientist in Argentina if one were a vegetarian. I believe he concluded that no, it was not possible: beef is so much a part of Argentine culture that it is a grave insult to refuse to eat it when a guest at someone's table. (I'm not sure if he decided to do his fieldwork somewhere else -- Nepal, say -- or if he started eating meat.) Surprisingly, El Gaucho does have a vegetarian menu, but we ignored it. We were there to eat beef.
We ordered the girls a steak and fries to share. Ed and I got the parrillada (tabletop grill) for two. You can also get it for one, should you happen to visit El Gaucho with a dining partner who looks at the list of what's included (short ribs, flank steak, chorizo sausage, sweet breads, and blood sausage) and turns pale. It was amazing. We'd had blood sausage (aka black sausage) as part of our Irish breakfast at a B&B while in Ireland years ago, and I have to say, it's way better when it wasn't made by the Irish. The best thing on the grill was the short ribs, though. They were so, so good. Chewy but not tough and yeah, I could totally see after one bite what they mean by "distinctive beefy flavor."
Mmmm. Wow.
The girls both behaved impeccably. We had dessert but didn't linger over coffee or anything since they were starting to get restless (and it was getting late). It had been rainy when we drove over; just as the waitress was running our credit card, the skies opened and it started to come down in sheets. I got soaked to the skin leaning over to buckle Kiera in (you can't really juggle an umbrella while buckling up a carseat -- in any case, the umbrella was only keeping me damp, not dry).
Still, it was well worth it. Mmmmmm. We've got to go back there sometime.
El Gaucho serves Argentine and Uruguayan beef. A recent short review in the Star Trib noted that the beef is less tender than American beef, but with much more of a "distinctive beefy flavor," as it is not corn-fed. They also noted that Argentine is #1 in the world for beef consumption.
My father is a Political Scientist, and some years back one of his graduate students wrote a paper on whether it was possible to do fieldwork as a social scientist in Argentina if one were a vegetarian. I believe he concluded that no, it was not possible: beef is so much a part of Argentine culture that it is a grave insult to refuse to eat it when a guest at someone's table. (I'm not sure if he decided to do his fieldwork somewhere else -- Nepal, say -- or if he started eating meat.) Surprisingly, El Gaucho does have a vegetarian menu, but we ignored it. We were there to eat beef.
We ordered the girls a steak and fries to share. Ed and I got the parrillada (tabletop grill) for two. You can also get it for one, should you happen to visit El Gaucho with a dining partner who looks at the list of what's included (short ribs, flank steak, chorizo sausage, sweet breads, and blood sausage) and turns pale. It was amazing. We'd had blood sausage (aka black sausage) as part of our Irish breakfast at a B&B while in Ireland years ago, and I have to say, it's way better when it wasn't made by the Irish. The best thing on the grill was the short ribs, though. They were so, so good. Chewy but not tough and yeah, I could totally see after one bite what they mean by "distinctive beefy flavor."
Mmmm. Wow.
The girls both behaved impeccably. We had dessert but didn't linger over coffee or anything since they were starting to get restless (and it was getting late). It had been rainy when we drove over; just as the waitress was running our credit card, the skies opened and it started to come down in sheets. I got soaked to the skin leaning over to buckle Kiera in (you can't really juggle an umbrella while buckling up a carseat -- in any case, the umbrella was only keeping me damp, not dry).
Still, it was well worth it. Mmmmmm. We've got to go back there sometime.
