Good Afternoon, Vietnam

I just had one of those spontaneously cool afternoons where my aimless meandering ended up more interesting than anything I could plan.

I was in Palermo for my monthly injection of Mark's Deli's iced mocha (btw, they offer it para llevar now, and it felt rather deliciously SoCal walking around with a big plastic cup and straw--I know, I know, I'm lame) and decided to wander into the Vietnam store, a way cool but way expensive boutique selling gorgeous clothing mostly in red and yellow hues created in that SE Asian country by hopefully well-compensated locals. Anyhow as it turned out the restaurant in the back of the store opened for business as of last night, and I ended up sampling the spring rolls and the classic café su da. And get this--they even have pho on the menu, though not today for some reason. Oscar and Marta, the couple that owns the store/restaurant, were so excited to meet someone born near Vietnam that they just pulled up a chair at my table, and we chatted like three old pals for nearly an hour.

And that in a nutshell encapsulates what I love best about Argentina: the friendliness, warmth, and open curiosity of complete strangers. So that's the good news anyway; the bad news is the food needs...um, to kindly put it, improvement. Times like these I wish my mom were here to give them a tip or two. She can outcook anyone, including Vietnamphilic Argentines.

(Alas, I didn’t have my camera with me today…)

To Counter the Previous Post...

I hereby commend Cafe de Paris in Vicente Lopez for their consistently good service. Prompt offering of the menu and no disappearance once the food's been delivered. Customer service rating: 3/4 stars!

Casa Felix

It was my fourth time at Casa Felix, the hidden puerta cerrada restaurant that's part of a dining trend that's smokin' up the Buenos Aires night scene (there’s a New York Times piece on it, look it up). Casa Felix is helmed by chef Diego Felix, who although Argentine picked up his gastronomic training in the states and all over South America, chiefly in Paraguay. His strikingly beautiful girlfriend, Sanra, an American, works the pastry/dessert component. For 65 pesos/person (it used to be 70), you get this fantastically multi-layered, multi-course meal that's either vegetarian or pescatarian or vegan (your choice) involving fresh, seasonal, and sometimes organic players. Fourth time's the charm--as were the first, second, and third. Truth be told, I've never had an experience there that wasn't outstanding in some way.

Casa Felix used to be in an eclectic, funky space in Palermo Hollywood, complete with an open-air courtyard (it often reminded me of something you'd see in that hipster part of LA known as Silverlake). Now it's in Chacarita, a family nabe I never read about, in an even bigger, funkier space--also with an open-air courtyard. I was pleased to see that the ambiance hadn't been altered with the move, since I so loved the tree murals and the under-the-stars seating (weather permitting) of the old place, also because part of dining in someone else's house requires a leap of aesthetic faith of sort--i.e., that they won't have, as my brother Bo so charmingly put it, shitty taste in decor. (The concept of a closed-door restaurant eluded him, and he kept picturing us barging into someone's Roseanne-like living room decked with thrift-store art and a blaring TV used as a soundtrack.) Rest assured, Bo was comforted by what he saw.

In a crunchy little nutshell, we had an amazing meal. Each course kept topping the previous in complexity and taste. I think Diego's specialty lies in how he twines the salty, sweet, and sour in a compelling way--often mixing veggies and fruit so you get your vities and minerals all out of the way--the end product being some kind of taste bombshell. It was like having a wholesome frat (oxymoron much?) party inside your mouth--and with raw zucchini of all things! (Even my awesome mom can't get me to eat that.)

So here was last night's lineup:

(1) Tropical white wine sangria (with floating bits of pineapple and mango)

(2) Spicy black bean dip served with homemade bread, not pictured because I ate it all. [The bread was so pillowy soft, I wanted to doze on it.]

(3) Organic zucchini rolls stuffed with steamed beets, goat cheese, and pine mushroom with an apricot and saffron dressing. [This was to die for. Even the carrot slaw was crunchy sweet. Seriously, I think I heard Nannette moaning from the sheer deliciousness of it all.]

(4) Mbeyú with chunky tomato and pineapple salsa, scattered with Colombian or Bolivan peanuts. [The grilled mbeyú was addicting. I kept swiping off of other people's plate. Mbeyú is a Paraguayan carb made with yucca and taro, although to my rather uninformed palate, it tasted an awful lot like Japanese mochi, pounded rice. Actually, my thirteen-year-old budding foodie pointed that out.]

(5) Melon granita, to cleanse the palate and prep you for the main course, which was...

(6) Grilled grouper fish with sautéed seasonal veggies, lime-flavored mashed potatoes with yellow chilies, served with a side of black-olive tapenade. [Outstanding kaleidoscope of flavors: salty fish, mouth-puckeringly sour puréed papas--though I didn't detect any chilies--and sweet smashed olives. Each bite had something interesting. Swoon.]

(7) Carob and peanut butter cake with orange mousse. [This was good though to be honest, we were so stuffed at that point I’m not sure we did it justice. The orange topping was less mousse and more icy sorbet-like. I liked this, but I will forever plead my loyalty to their staggeringly good tres leches cake, first served back in February.]

(8) Cocido negro, a Latin American hot beverage involving burning the yerba maté with sugar to get that dark color. [Musky and sweet and oh-so comforting nearly 3 hours later...]

Good food + good company = one of life's greatest pleasures. And in this intimate, hidden diner, you get to revel in both. So...what are you waiting for--they only seat 12 a night! Make that reservation stat. www.diegofelix.com

Enfunda la Mandolina

With an insider rec from my dear friend Macarena (whose exact words were, "We eat more than just asados, you know"), we managed to trek down to Enfunda la Mandolina in Palermo (self-billed as una cocina atípicamente porteňa) last night for a sampling of Argentine fare that's absent grilled meat. The setting was lushly gorgeous and playfully littered with retro toys and non-thematic knick-knacks. The food was comforty, lickety good, with most platos principales being 12-15 pesos (entradas being 5-7)! Despite the reverse sticker shock, no details were skimmed on, least of all the presentation--many of the dishes were served in adorable candy jars that were tipped over in a lake of coulis. We ooh-aahed our way into a delicious carb coma all night long. Notably, it was the most attentive service I've had in town (you hear that--Cafe Tortoni and Mark's Deli?!). I will definitely head back, if only for the tiramisu, which despite its massive popularity among the XX-chromo crowd had always left me rather unconvinced as a fan--until now. Nice work, Enfunda, nice work...

Pictured: pastel de papas, front entrance, fried faina, abondigas, and rabas

Java Junket: 19

Café Tortoni. Café con leche y crema. 6.5 pesos. 11/18/07. Hands down the most atrocious service I’ve encountered in BA (and I've seen plenty). We sat for a good 25 minutes before someone grudgingly shuffled over to hand us a menu--despite all the fanny-packed yokels who came in after us getting served. I so didn’t want to be that Ugly American and bitch ad nauseum about how.things.work back home, but Jesus on a stick, as someone who's had a good run as a waitress I couldn’t help but get my panties in a twist over the inane and lame service. Wild chocolate con churros can’t drag me back.

The Tea Connection

It's a piece of the southland right in the heart of Recoleta. The Tea Connection, with its pretentious LA vibe, offers up precious pots of brewed tea leaves--green/red/black, herbal/not, fruity/straight, etc. etc., with killer baked goods. Also refreshing to see as many vegetarian sandwich options (on black-olives bread no less!) as meaty ones. Plus, tofu salad with ginger/green onion vinegrette! This home girl's going back soon, if only to test drive the whole grain apple pancakes. Crushed ice, turbinado sugar--mos def a love connection.

Back in Kansas

It seems perverted to dine at Kansas for supersized American fanfare when so many cool Argentine places abound. But some things defy explanation, and just as I guiltily pleasure in Hit Me Baby One More Time, I dig Kansas despite the inner commentary from my best self. I lovvved the mop-like BBQ brush and must have squealed so loud in delight that the manager beelined over to tell me to put the camera away.

Oui, Oui

This jam-packed French-like bistro served up some awesome lemonade that had bits of floating mint. The hummus was meh, typically dry and lacking tahini. Still, it was a lovely spring day, sunny and breezy as swirls of foliage found their way into our hair and drinks.

(Almost ) As Good as Little Saigon, CA

Sudestada Restaurant, Palermo. I love ingenuity in the food world, like this clever lunch ticket doohickey: You hole-punch your selection in each category and hand it to the hot server without any mangling of language. This Ikea-like precision and clean, pristine decor make me want to holler for an order of Swedish meatballs... So what does this have to do with Little Saigon? Almost nothing, except everything, grasshopper. (Now where's that lingonberry sauce?)

One Night in Mumbai

They say if you hang out in Argentina long enough, you'll start to think the ethnic food there is decent due to unconsciously lowered expectations. I scoffed at the theory when I arrived here 14 months ago, because dude--there seemed no way I was ever gonna warm up to the stuff. Chinese noodles here are made with spaghetti, fer christ's sake, and when I think of how in Monterey Park you could get hand-pulled noodles of every consistency and length, it is to weep. As if that ain't bad enough, sushi is basically a prepositional tryst involving two fixtures: Mr. Salmon and Miss Cream Cheese; i.e., you can have the salmon on top of the cream cheese or the cream cheese on top of the salmon or--if you're feeling super frisky--hide and seek the salmon inside the cream cheese! (Watch out for that sprig of parsley, kids!)

Anyway, I've been on a bit of an Indian food bender lately and miss the half-hour drive to Artesia, LA's Little India. So for the last couple weeks I managed to trek al centro 3 times(!) to Katmandu, Katmandu, and Mumbai. Sorry spawn. My dear mom used to lament that if I could only channel my obsessive foodieness toward something worthwhile, I would be someone really important by now, like maybe even a homeowner. Sorry, mac...

So Katmandu and Mumbai are owned by the same people and offer basically the same menu. Katmandu seemed to have a better Bollywood ambiance, mostly because both times we were there they played the soundtrack to Devdas, causing me to swoon to the images of Shah Rukh Khan in my head. Mumbai had a more intimate setting. Several times throughout the evening, we'd have English-speaking people nod and smile our way as if to say, yeah, we're travelers too.

Anyway, I must say that food wise, I was nicely surprised: The curries weren't too shabby. We ordered the chicken in buttery tomato-cardamon sauce (an odd description but I think they just wanted to differentiate it from their ordinary curry), the mushroom-pea (ordinary) curry, and biryani, which was a heaping bowl of basmati rice tossed with just the (ordinary) curry. The sauces were thick enough, spicy enough, pungent enough, passing my usual litmus test of "Can you spot the asafatida?" The naan was too chewy though and didn't have nearly enough garlic. Plus, I doubt they really had a tandoori in the kitchen. The one heartbreaking disappointment was that neither restaurant offered chai tea on their menu! I mean, (1) How fucking hard is it to make chai tea? You already have the spices! (2) How in clear conscience can you call yourself an Indian restaurant without the fucking chai tea? and (3) How fucking hard is it to make chai tea?!

Oh and I nearly forgot about the samosas--they were pretty tasty considering these are Indian restaurants in Buenos Aires, Argentina! Always with the qualifiers... I should tell you that I'm quite picky about samosas, and the best ones to me are those whose pastry crusts recall my older sister's fried coconut-banana fritters. And these suckers had just a touch of Sarah's batter. Mmm...

So was the food actually decent or have my expectations been lowered? I have to say, yes.