A journalism major at Northwestern University, Kira immediately dismissed the no-zone idea. Determined to hunt down the best flavors in her new city, she recruited a few friends and embarked on her own set of taxi adventures. “A good choripan,” she said, “Is worth the risk.”

Here’s Kira’s report on her Buenos Aires food quests.

Last week, my co-adventurers and I met at the obelisco in Buenos Aires’ tourist-filled city center. We hailed a taxi, brimming with anticipation at the idea of entering a ‘no-zone’ and ending the night somewhere far from downtown.

Our taxista, Dante, was surprisingly agreeable and told us right away, “I like to eat pizza at the best place in Buenos Aires.” We asked him to take us straight there.

On the way, we learned about Dante’s past as a graphic designer, his four children, and his childhood in the northern province of Salta. He came to Buenos Aires because “it’s beautiful and has everything. [It’s] the most important city in the world,.” He eventually turned to taxi driving for financial and personal reasons that he didn’t care to explain.

When he dropped us off at El Imperio in the distant neighborhood of Chacarita, he told us he always orders two slices of mozzarella to go.

“Every time I pass by, I have to get pizza,” he said, getting out of his cab and following us into the restaurant. Before going back to his shift, he stopped by our table, take-away bag in hand, to make sure we’d been taken care of.

We shared a large pizza, half mozzarella and half fugazetta. As Dante promised, the pizza came quickly, dripping with cheese. The crust was thick and spongy, as is the custom in Buenos Aires, but the pizza had more flavor than the typical porteño slice. My favorite was the fugazetta, an Argentine specialty layered with sliced onions and cheese.

We left the restaurant stuffed with pizza and sweets (strawberry pie, cookies, and chocolate pastries), thrilled at having ventured to unfamiliar ground. The excitement simmered, however, when the next day I learned that Layne had been to El Imperio on a previous taxi adventure.

Eager to stake out new territory, my co-adventurers and I meet again. Our first taxi driver takes us straight to a pasta restaurant next to the obelisco that offers tourist discounts and English menus. Unimpressed, we hail another cab, still hoping to blaze new trails.

Horacio understands. Our second cabbie tells us about a steak house he goes to with a group of four taxista and auto-mechanic friends every Sunday at 2am to talk about life, cars, interesting passengers, and things they see in the street.

“It’s far,” he warns us.

“Perfect,” I reply, ready to escape the city center.

Horacio chats openly with us, sharing his wisdom about the city and professing his love for the River Plate soccer team (one of the most popular clubs in Buenos Aires). In 18 years of driving a cab, he’s never been in an accident, although he sees them on the “dangerous streets” all the time. Horacio likes to drive at night when the city is calmer, leaving daylight hours for sleeping “like Dracula.”

We arrive at the restaurant, 2901, which is within walking distance of the taxi storage depot in the Belgrano neighborhood, making it the perfect place for cabbies to grab a steak and beer after a long shift.

But on this night, the place is crowded with groups of friends sharing liters of beer and local families watching soccer games and reality shows. I ask for a table for six (for better or worse, American students travel in packs), and the friendly waiter stays to explain each dish on the menu.

We end up sharing a steak, a milanesa, chorizo sausage, French fries, and a platter of roasted vegetables. The steak is tender and perfectly cooked, the chorizo delicious, but the milanesa does not impress.

As a thunderstorm engulfs the city, we sit and chat in 2901 for hours, soaking up our surroundings and enjoying our feast. We may not have crossed into a no-zone, but we were somewhere completely new – wallets and cell phones in hand.

El Imperio
Corrientes 6891 (esq. Federico Lacroze)
Tel: 4553-0875 / 4553-1464
elimperiodelapizza@fibertel.com.ar

2901
Congreso 2901 (esq. Cramer)
Tel: 4544-8686
Open 24 hours and delivery

Sometimes the city reveals its secrets to me: a signless bakery here, an underground milonga there, a speakeasy here, a ¨closed door¨restaurant there. Other times, I penetrate its bajo fondo only to be tossed out on my bum.

Such was the case on my journey to 2901 with a taxi driver who refused to be named.

Unamused by the premise of my food quest, he gave me two choices for lunch:

a) an all-you-can eat buffet called Charly in Belgrano R

b) a restaurante de barrio/parrilla also in Belgrano where ¨taxi drivers always go to eat¨

Naturally, I chose the latter, intrigued by the prospect of breaking bread with cabbies on their lunch break.

¨Taxistas are more concerned about price than quality,¨ the driver warned me, ¨This place isn´t Puerto Madero.¨

Not a problem, I told him.

¨I make between 1300-1500 pesos (roughly 400-500 dollars) a month,¨ he explained, ¨I can´t go to fancy places.¨

Understood.

¨Right now,¨he continued, ¨With the farmers´ strike, the economy is closed. This hurts taxi drivers, it hurts street vendors…People can´t afford to eat meat every day any more.¨

I agreed that the high cost of beef was a new and tragic reality, especially in a country that coined the phrase ¨if there´s no meat, there´s no food.¨

As we drew closer to his chosen lunch spot, the taxi driver´s diatribe grew more impassioned. Like so many of his compatriots, his love of country was mixed with outrage and resignation.

¨In the U.S. or Germany or Spain, this thing with the farmers would´ve been resolved by now. But Argentina is unstable.¨

¨It´s the same politicans as always,¨ he added, ¨El innombrable [unnameable former President Carlos Menem] sold the country out [in the 1990s], and the people in power now are doing the same thing. We have wheat, soy, meat, oil – everything! And we´re in debt. We work and other countries gain.¨

He stopped at the corner of Cramer and Congreso and cocked his head toward a parrilla below a red awning. When I passed him 12 pesos for the ride, he fed me a final, politically charged morsel:

¨Look at this business with Cristina´s election and the suitcase full of money from Venezuela. If the U.S. can´t get get its way through war, it corrupts things from the inside.¨

What could I say? I nodded (with outrage and resignation), climbed out of the cab, and stepped into the lunch buzz at 2901.

From the looks of things, the taxistas had chosen to eat elsewhere. The dining room was full of twenty-something guys and their mulleted girlfriends, fathers and sons, and men of retirement age flipping leisurely through El Clarín.

I chose a table against the wall and took in the rest of the scene: burgundy curtains worn thin over time and many washings, metal-backed chairs, the TV news (broadcasting the latest from the farmers´strike) on mute, and a Coca-Cola refrigerator resting on a spotless linoleum floor.

Yes, this was a restaurante de barrio, the kind of place that continues to survive in Buenos Aires despite the popularity of McDonald´s and Burger King and the impending arrival of Starbucks.

The menu contained the usual array of local favorites: bifes, pastas, milanesas, merluza (hake fish), rabas (fried calamari). I asked a bow-tied server for his recommendation and was soon face to face with a plate of peceto (a humble cut of beef that tastes like a less fatty version of pot roast) with salsa portuguesa (fresh mint, canned peas, and oven-roasted onions and peppers).

The dish, which also came with soft-ball sized portions of mashed potatoes and butternut squash puree, could have easily fed three people.

I sipped a glass of the house red (fruity and thin and served in a metal pitcher) mixed with soda water as I worked my way through the pile of simple food before me. The mashed potatoes were amazing, but the peceto and the butternut squash bland.

I paid for my solid, nourishing, price-over-quality meal and searched for the bathroom, still wondering where the taxistas could be.

As I wandered deeper into the bowels of the restaurant, I stumbled on a glass-enclosed smoking section and heard a series of masculine shouts that I assumed were coming from the kitchen.

I peeked around a corner and discovered the source of the noise: a windowless room full of smoking, beer-drinking, dice-throwing, card-dealing men who had to be taxistas.

Part of me wanted to go in and talk to them, to do a few interviews and soak in a bit of their lunch break euphoria. But most of me knew that in this instance, my gender and my foreignness were not working in my favor. I was an outsider in every sense.

Sure enough, a grey-haired taxista looked up from his cards and stared at me with surprise and ¨go away¨ in his eyes. Before he could alert his compañeros to my presence, I turned and disappeared, leaving the men in their secret room, satisfied that at least I´d toed the threshold.

2901
Congreso 2901 (Belgrano)
Tel: 4544-8636
Open: 24 hours

Inside, a family of four chatters around a bottle of wine and ignores the basket of rolls growing stale beneath cold blasts of conditioned air.

At the table next door, I finger the edge of a red vinyl place mat and try to attract the attention of two waitresses engrossed in conversation and Coca-Cola.

Graceful and practiced, an asador [grill master] smashes charcoal with the back of a shovel and tosses blood sausage, chorizo, kidneys, intestines, and skirt steak onto his grill.

It’s Saturday at 2 pm in Belgrano R, and I’m about to eat lunch at La Vaca Pampa.

A mirror of the simple elegance of its surrounding neighborhood, the shoe box-sized parrilla [steak house] is somewhere that Óscar, a taxista for 14 years, has eaten many times. His daughter lives in the building next door.

“Order anything you like. It’s all good,” he’d assured me as he drove through the drizzle on Avenida los Incas and dropped me off on Avenida Elcano.

More and more, I’m making peace with the idea that the taxistas I enlist on these food quests are most likely going to take me to a parrilla. We are, after all, living in the Metropolis of Meat.
And the parrilla is, quite simply, the most direct route to the Buenos Aires version of soul food. It’s an institution, a beloved emblem, and a gathering place that can express itself in a myriad of ways.

There’s the date parrilla, with soft lighting, pretty views, and sidewalk tables. At the family parrilla, long menus, huge tables, and cheap prices insure that there’s something for everyone. Meanwhile, at the testosterone-friendly parrilla, you’ll find all soccer all the time, ripped chairs, dirty windows, and wall-mounted beer signs.

People stand and devour as quickly as the asador can sling the meat off the grill at the fast-food parrilla. At the other end of the spectrum, the parrilla for export impresses out of town visitors with cloth napkins, inflated prices, and voluminous wine lists. The wheel-and-deal parrilla, where the food is consistently good and the service at once attentive and hands-off, follows close behind.

Of all these local riffs on the steak house, my favorite by far is the neighborhood parrilla. Small and no-nonsense, it’s a place where regulars make up the vast majority of the clientèle, where the owner is often the one who serves your food, where the asador is known and trusted.

My first bite of entraña [skirt steak] at La Vaca Pampa confirms that it is such a place.

Easy to overcook, and often tough and chewy, their skirt steak is tender enough to cut with a fork. The grilled tomato that accompanies it – slathered in good olive oil, just enough salt and oregano – is still firm and bursting with summer sweetness.

I linger over my lunch, confident that I can camp out at this four-top as long as I like, despite the fact that I am alone.

The owner smiles at me over the cash register, noting my pleasure with satisfaction, knowing he’s won a customer who will return.

The table next door moves from organ meats to bifes of various types and orders another bottle of wine.

The waitresses joke with the asador, who sips orange Fanta from a tall glass and keeps one eye on his grill.

Suddenly, the sky bursts into a torrential summer rain, and there’s no better place for any of us to be.

La Vaca Pampa
Parrilla al carbón de Santiago Negrotto
Av. Elcano 3243 (Belgrano R)
Tel: 4554-5498
Hours: Lunch and dinner 7 days a week

“They’ve got everything at this place,” he says, “Really good pastas, steaks, even pizza. But the great thing is their daily special. Every day it’s something different. So you can keep going there and have a different experience every time.”

This sounds hopeful. A rotating menu is usually a good thing, after all…

“I don’t go there every day – there’s no way I could afford it. But I take my family there when I can.”

Visions of a tasty neighborhood hideout dance in my head.

Two pesos and a few kilometers later, we pull in front of Plaza Carmen, Buenos Aires’s answer to Applebee’s. Visions bite the dust.

“There you go,” the taxista pulls over, “Don’t forget to order the special.”

I start to pull out my pesos to pay him, struggling to suppress the memory of a recent mediocre meal at Manhattan Café (a restaurant that could easily pass for Plaza Carmen’s cousin). On this day, my hunger is unwilling to surrender to another overpriced, forgettable plate of food.

“I’ve actually been to Plaza Carmen before,” I say, flashing back to the rubbery grease-fest of a pizza I’d eaten there with my ex-novio, “I’d rather go somewhere you eat every day.”

Juan Pablo turns his ocean-colored eyes on me, “I eat at the YPF [gas station] two blocks away. It’s all taxistas. Fast food…Standing up…It’s not a place for a girl.”

I’m having the same conversation with Juan Pablo as I had with Guillermo, last week’s taxista who refused to take me to his favorite YPF for lunch. I take another look at the pink and green Plaza Carmen sign. Right on cue, my stomach throws off a growl of protest that I choose to interpret as: “Ditch Plaza Carmen, hold on to chutzpah, and go to the gas station.”

“Are you sure?” Juan Pablo says.

I nod. Their (understandable) objections aside, I’m obviously going to have to brave a gas station at some point if I want to gain entrance to the cab driver culinary universe.

“OK,” he shakes his head, “But it’s not a place for a girl.”

Refusing to take the extra pesos I offer him, Juan Pablo drops me across the street from YPF without a word.

I march past the taxis gassing up at the pumps and into the fishbowl of the make-shift diner at the back of the station.

I feel the weight of the stares of three taxistas munching on milanesas, who interrupt their exchange of profanities as soon as I invade their space.

The aproned man behind the blue formica counter greets me with a surprised but kind “Buenas tardes.”

I scan the menu – a series of wall-mounted computer printouts in plastic sleeves – consider the quiches and fried empanadas in the grease-stained display case, and sense that I need to come to a quick decision.

“I’ll have a sandwich with cantimpalo [sausage] and provolone.”

“What kind of bread? I’ve got pan de pebete, french bread, pita…”

“Pebete.”

The taxistas and I fixate on the ESPN soccer highlights as the man behind the counter slices the cheese and cantimpalo (a type of chorizo made with oregano, garlic, and red pepper), piles them on the pebete (sweet white bread made with milk and butter), and throws the sandwich in a plastic bag. Grand total: 3 pesos and 80 centavos (about $1.20).

I grab a napkin, find an empty spot on the blue formica and pull out my sandwich. The man behind the counter rushes out with a plate.

“I assumed you were going to take it to go,” he apologizes.

A safe assumption – and perhaps a wish. The silence in the fishbowl is thick with bewilderment. What is this strange woman doing here?

Acutely conscious of the fact that I’m interrupting lunch hour and testosterone time, I gobble up my sandwich (which is not only cheap but delicious) and thank the man behind the blue formica.

Discomfort for all concerned aside, I’d rather eat at this YPF than half the restaurants that well-meaning taxistas have taken me to in the past. And pssssst…I hear the empanadas are pretty good here, too.

YPF
Calle Moldes and Crisólogo Larralde
Belgrano

“I have colon problems,” the taxista said when I threw out my would-you-please-take-me-someplace-good-to-eat request, “So I haven’t eaten out in months.”

“Besides,” he added, patting his slim belly, “You don’t eat what we eat.”

“Excuse me?” I said. Who was ‘you’ and who was ‘we’?

“You don’t want to eat at a place I’d go to. I eat steak. Hot dogs. Sandwiches. Simple stuff – ”

“Yes, I do! That’s exactly what I’m looking for!”

“No,” he said, turning on the meter, “Someone like you is looking for a nice place. Someplace like that.”

He pointed to a leafy sidewalk cafe where women in stilettos and Ray Bans smoked and sipped sparkling water. Here in Belgrano (my new, well-heeled neighborhood on BA’s north end), such places abound.

“I’m not interested in going somewhere like that,” I insisted, “I want to go someplace you’ve been, a place you went…before you started having colon problems.”

“Aren’t you from this neighborhood?”

“Actually, I just moved over here three days ago.”

“Ooooooooohhhhhhh, I see! Now I get it. You don’t know anything.”

Now we were getting somewhere.

“Well, Belgrano is a very nice neighborhood. See that pizzeria? San Cayetano. It’s really good. I’m not sure about the rest of their food, but I know the pizza’s good.”

We rocketed past San Cayetano before I could suggest that we stop.

“And I can also tell you where to find great ice cream. At Saverio. On Avenida Cabildo, the 1600 block, I think.”

“Excellent.” I was taking copious notes, thrilled that Mario’s puzzlement had transformed into the hospitality I so adore about this city.

“Don’t bother going to Pompeii for pizza,” he pointed to a restaurant with an enormous banner sign that I’d walked past many times, “Their prices will kill you. And look at all these gyms! I’m assuming you go to the gym? You can do pilates there and work off your lunch. Ah, but you don’t need to worry about that.”

We continued coasting down Avenida Cabildo toward the center of Buenos Aires while Mario chattered away, brainstorming our destination.

“I know where I can take you!” he cried, “Manhattan! You can order anything there.”

“And you’ve eaten there?”

“Yes, I was there a few months ago. I went with my daughter.”

“Perfect,” I said.

“Here we are!”

We lurched to a stop in front of a three story aluminum replica of the Chrysler building reminiscent of Vegas in the daytime. The red neon sign emblazoned over the art deco entrance read: Manhattan Café.

“Order anything,” he said, “They’ve got it all!”

I heaved an inner sigh as I opened the mammoth menu and discovered that Mario was right. They did have it all, but at least they were on theme. From the Woody Allen (turkey, mushrooms, hearts of palm, mayo and catsup) and 5th Avenue salads (white rice, chicken, hearts of palm, and eggs) to the New York Times and Rockefeller Center breakfasts, there was obviously a lot of ‘I heart NY’ going on here.

However, judging from the nearly empty restaurant, there was obviously not a lot of ‘I heart Manhattan Café‘ going on. A tattered photo of steak and fries above the bar and the withered plants at the top of a staircase leading to a second story smoking lounge added to the feeling of faded hope that hovered over the dining room.

Two vested and aproned waiters glanced my way and continued what they were doing. I toyed with the idea of fleeing to Saverio and eating ice cream for lunch.

Finally, a server approached me without a word, cleared the coffee cups of the diners who’d preceded me, and wiped their crumbs in my lap. Once finished, he shot me an expectant look that I translated as: what do you want?

“I’ll have the roast chicken special and a salad,” I said.

“Drink?”

“Sparkling water.”

A quick nod, and he was off to the other end of the vast dining room, shouting my drink order to the bar man and busting into the kitchen to do the same.

Not five minutes later, he brought my salad, a sad assemblage of yellowing watercress, pink tomatoes and carrots flecked with brown spots that barely tasted better than it looked.

Thankfully, a walking vendor entered the restaurant and interrupted my misery by selling me a battery-powered stove lighter.

“Just what I needed,” I told her.

“God bless you. And buen provecho,” she answered, lugging her wares back outside.

I turned my attention to the roast chicken that had arrived in the middle of our exchange. Topped with a tomatoes and onions and resting on a pond of its own juice, it actually looked promising.

My first few bites upheld that promise. The chicken was moist, perfectly cooked, and full of flavor. But as I got deeper into the piece of meat, the texture transformed from silky to mealy, the flavor from full to watery. Either the bird had eaten something that had turned its flesh to mush, or it had simply been frozen too long. Alas.

Unfortunate chicken partially consumed, I beat it out of the Manhattan Café, headed straight for Saverio, and ordered a double cone: figs with honey and ristretto granizado (espresso with chocolate chips).

As the mohawked, lip-pierced twenty-something handed me my cone, I held on to hope and took my first bite. This ice cream chain of three stores has been around since 1909, so they must be doing something right.

But not with their figs and honey. Where were those figs? Lost somewhere in disappointing, super-sweet milkiness. Strike two for Mario.

I ditched the figs and dug into the ristretto. Fireworks of coffee and dark chocolate exploded in my mouth and shot between the bitter and sweet regions of my palate. The purity of the espresso flavor was the main event. Remarkably, the chocolate stayed in the background, nothing more than a subtle embellishment. This was synergy.

This was Mario’s home run.

Manhattan Cafe
Av. Cabildo 1792 (esquina La Pampa) – Belgrano
Tel: 4787-3655/4783-9544

Saverio
Av. Cabildo 1501 (esquina Virrey Arredondo) – Belgrano
Tel: 0800-444-1909

“What are you doing in Buenos Aires?”

“Do you have family here?”

“Are you single?”

If I start talking to any taxi driver in Buenos Aires, I’ll bet my tango shoes that these Four Questions will come up – in that exact order.

This afternoon, I was fortunate enough to get in a cab with Renato, who began The Four Questions after I asked him to take me to his favorite place to eat.

I did what I usually do in response to this Latin line of interrogation: I interviewed him right back – and, as usual, got to hear an interesting story.

Renato is from Misiones (a province in Argentina’s northwest that’s home to Iguazu Falls). He came to Buenos Aires fifteen years ago, started cooking professionally, got fed up with the madness of the restaurant world, and began driving a cab three months ago.

“The money’s better, and there’s a lot less stress driving a cab,” he said, “There was always some crisis in the kitchen – I could never keep good help. I’m much happier now.”

I told him I felt his pain, having spent almost a year getting my butt kicked in a professional kitchen in San Francisco.

And then we began to talk some serious food, especially after I discovered that Renato’s married to a Peruvian woman who also loves to cook.

“So where do you guys go to eat Peruvian when your wife doesn’t cook?” I asked him (overjoyed that I was having the kind of conversation I’d fantasized about when I cooked up the idea for these food adventures).

“All the places in Abasto (BA’s Peruvian restaurant haven) are crap,” he said, “Except one called Mamani. But there’s an even better one, called Tumi de Oro, in Belgrano.”

We were heading to the 10-peso buffet where Renato usually eats lunch, which I was not terribly excited about. As I jotted down his recommendations, I asked him if he could take me to Tumi de Oro instead.

Not only am I wild about Peruvian food, but Renato’s knowledge was even more valuable in light of the fact that Peruvian (a.k.a. cocina novoandina) is slowly replacing sushi as the next local food craze.

“You have to get to Tumi de Oro early – otherwise you can’t get a seat,” he warned, “It’s right by the train station – you have to ask around to find it, though.”

He was handing me the keys to the kingdom, and I thanked him profusely. After listening carefully to his directions, I crossed the train tracks and stared into the shops surrounding the station.

I passed a hair salon with a single customer, a hot dog and steak kiosk, and a santeria store before I finally found a grey-haired man standing watch outside a hardware store. I asked him where Tumi de Oro was.

He looked at me as if I’d asked him the way to Oz.

“I don’t know of any restaurant around here by that name, but there is a Peruvian place around the corner.”

Thanking him, I followed the direction of his pointing finger to a deserted street where the only things open were a steak house and a stationary shop. I marched into the latter and asked if they knew where I could find Tumi de Oro.

The pony-tailed manager jerked his chin toward a closed restaurant across the street, “That’s the only Peruvian around here, and I should know, I’ve worked here for 15 years, and I see all the comings and goings in this neighborhood.”

Not only was it a bummer that it was closed, but even more upsetting was the fact that Tumi de Oro wasn’t Tumi de Oro. No – the restaurant in question was called ‘Contigo Peru,’ a place I’d seen in a number of travel books and food guides.

Had I misunderstood Renato’s directions? Not likely – Contigo Peru was exactly where he’d said Tumi de Oro was located. I moped out of the stationary store.

On this day, there would be no ceviche for me.

By this time, I was starving. Luckily, I was within a stone’s throw of Chinatown, so all possibilities for culinary adventure were not lost. I hurried to a mom-and-pop rice noodle shop that I’d been wanting to check out, where they served 5-peso plates of stir fry at lunchtime. Closed.

Undaunted, I headed for the noodle counter at the spectacularly stinky Asian Superstore on Calle Mendoza. Closed – along with the next four restaurants on my mental list.

What’s going on? I wondered.

Then I remembered: it was Monday. Plus, it was the day after city elections, so many BA shopkeepers were taking a respite from an exhausting political Sunday (in which none of the mayoral candidates won the 50% they needed for victory). I’d be lucky to find any place at all to eat.

Desperate and willing to settle for a superpancho, I passed Fujisan, a Japanese restaurant advertising a four-course lunch for 26 pesos. Sold.

A friendly server led me past the fountain in the entryway and seated me in the empty dining room. Noting the frantic ‘FEED ME’ expression in my eyes, he immediately brought a pot of green tea and a saucer full of cucumber slices marinated in chili and rice vinegar.

I tried to ignore the fake bamboo under orange spotlights and the music of a boy band I couldn’t name that belted through the speakers.

I was still nursing my disappointment about the elusive Tumi de Oro when the rest of my winter feast arrived: a steaming bowl of udon noodles, a fillet of grilled salmon with freshly grated ginger and daikon, a China cup of chawan mushi (egg custard with shitake mushrooms and shrimp), and a tiny dish of palate-cleansing pickled carrots and daikon.

I gobbled up my Japanese comfort food, savoring the clean flavors and appreciating the freshness of everything before me. Was it my hunger that heightened my pleasure?

Nourished and happy, I could not begrudge Renato or the closed Peruvian restaurant. Nor I could I help but wonder whether Renato gotten the name wrong. Was Tumi de Oro actually the well-known Contigo Peru?

Or was Tumi de Oro someplace else entirely? Had I just not looked hard enough?

Not to worry, my fellow food pilgrims, these and other food mysteries will not go unsolved. I’ll go back to Belgrano to renew my search for the Lost Restaurant – just not on a Monday.

Leer ‘Las Cuatro Preguntas y Fujisan’ en español en Guía Epicúreo