(Pre-Wedding) Honeymoon, Part I - Buenos Aires!

Exciting news - Grits Girl and Have Palate, Will Travel are finally tying the knot!  Hurrah!

To celebrate, we both decided to become unemployed and spend a month traveling around South America.  We put a lot of pressure on ourselves to pick the perfect place for this once in a lifetime opportunity - go somewhere really far, really difficult to see on a shorter timeline, and really not conducive to a junior grits girl toddling around.  Therefore, we selected South America - namely because of adventures in distant areas like Patagonia and the Atacama desert in Chile (the driest desert on earth).

We flew in to Buenos Aires on Wednesday via St. Louis to qualify for my annual executive platinum status - unbelievably inefficient but worth it for some premium class amenities for another year!  Check out how happy GG is here!

Since arrival, we've been exploring one of my favorite cities...
...it's funny to be back after nearly five years to visit some of the places I enjoyed the first go around.  We're staying at the Atempo Hotel in Palermo Hollywood and they surprised us with a lovely upgrade to a duplex suite with a balcony.  Very nice...and, yes, i arranged ahead of time to have a bottle of champagne and a sweet note for my bride to be (how could we go on a honeymoon without one super cheesy moment?!).

We spent much of our first day exploring our neighborhood and the many amazing shops...i visited one of my favorite shops, Felix, and picked up a bathing suit and a new wallet.  We grabbed a quick bite at a neighborhood italian spot that both our hotel and Time Out recommended - Il Ballo Del Mattone - but we were pretty underwhelmed.  Well, GG was with a homemade pasta (not so bad) and a soupy red sauce (bad).  It generally did look a little scary as well (yes, those little wormy multi-colored items at the bottom of this photo).

I selected Boconcmino con Pure Rustic which was essentially sauteed chicken with roasted potatoes.  Fairly good.  The one touch of note - they served the gratis bread with a side of mashed potatoes (or a mashed potato-like substance) to spread on the bread.  For a carb junky like me, interesting.

We explored the neighborhood some more, did some napping and then headed out to our first dinner at Tegui  - a somewhat under the radar contemporary argentine restaurant.  Unfortunately (but fortunately since this is how we found out about it), it was written up in the NY Times which means that the ratio of Americans to locals goes up precipitously.

That being said we had a wonderful dinner...our lovely concierge over at AMEX helped us snag the reservation and i guess mentioned that we were on our honeymoon as the servers promptly brought out two glasses of champagne and said congratulations.  Nice.

Following that was an amuse bouche - a diced tomato on a local soft cheese in a flaky, slightly sweet phyllo cone.

Next arrived four warm blinis with two different spreads - one a smoky eggplant, the other a creamy cheese spread.

The third amuse was a mini-ceviche spoon which was fresh and delicious...

Next we dove into the food we actually ordered.  The menu itself was quite simple - 5 starter choices and 5 entree choices.

We made sure there was no overlap with our four selections.

We started with the fried oysters in a bed of pureed sweet corn and fresh greens which was excellent and the foie gras with brioche - can't go wrong with that selection.

For our mains, we went for sea bass wrapped in bacon and a roasted quail with a creamy stuffing (that I swear had some organ - brain? - meat but GG disagrees) on a bed of sweet potato and white potato puree.  The quail was excellent - served a bit more rare than you'd see back home.

For dessert, after a sorbet palette cleanser, we shared the warm chocolate tart which was protected from overflowing with melted chocolate goodness by a chocolate cookie shell that tasted like an oreo.

Happily satisfied...

The next day we headed over to a favorite brunch spot in the neighborhood called Olsen - I had actually visited there on both of my previous trips and very much enjoyed the Scandinavian spot.  We selected from their set menu and opted for a roasted vegetable sandwich on hummus and a chicken breast cutlet on a bed of lettuce.  The melon soup was not so appetizing that GG opted for...We enjoyed the setting and the simple meal and the gratis bagels on a stick?!

After lunch we headed out to Recoleta to wander the posh neighborhood and enjoyed sitting in heavy traffic on Avenida 9 de Julio - the widest street in the world (that is no hyperbole!).  Once again, we wandered, shopped, wandered some more, shopped some more, and then explored the famous Recoleta Cemetary.  It is like a mini-city of stray cats and tightly stacked houses, except the houses are mausoleums and have dead people inside them.

From there, we went to MALBA, Argentina's museum of modern art which i also visited on both of my trips to BA.  The permanent collection was great and there was an interesting exhibition on Marta Minujin - a conceptual artist famous for real-life exhibitions called "Happenings" in the 60s and 70s and collaborated with artists like Christo and Warhol.  Too bad the entire exhibit was in spanish only so we probably missed out on some interesting subtleties.

Dinner last night was extremely interesting.  We secured a reservation at Casa Felix - actually not a restaurant but part of a growing trend in BA of private dinner salons in chefs' homes.  So, on this evening we dined at Diego Felix's home with his fiancee Sanra - Diego a young and interesting chef who specializes in local fish and vegetarian cuisine (an oddity in meaty BA).  We arrived to a random apartment in Chacarita - an edgy neighborhood still not completely touched by the Palermo gentrification creep.  We were shown into their backyard garden where about a dozen other people had gathered for mojito cocktails (not really mojitos as they were made with cachaca).  Diego came up to us and explained to us all about the vegetables and herbs he was growing and what would be used in the evening's dinner, including a flower from his fennel plant that tasted exactly like, well, fennell, but didn't resemble at all the fennel we're used to seeing as well as an arugala flower that tasted like arugala.  We had a "taste of the garden" which was a bite size fava bean and broccoli - since the garden can only be so big not every dish for every diner every evening comes from their actual garden.  The rest of the ingredients are sourced locally and/or picked up along their food explorations around South America.

After cocktails, we proceeded into their courtyard garden and snagged the coziest table of the bunch and the meal began to flow.  Sanra, our hostess, is actually a born and bred San Diegan who met Diego while studying abroad and years later here they are.  So she was able to really explain every morsel of food we were eating.

The view from our cozy table...

The view to our cozy table...

With each bite you could tell how fresh it was - the flavors leaping off our plates - so many unusual tastes that all perfectly complemented each other.  Our first course was a peruvian potato (cauca) pureed with olive oil and yellow chile peppers, topped with oyster mushrooms and in a suica sauce which is minty and made with an indigenous herb.

This was followed by a mango salad and spiced bolivian peanuts featuring a local starch resembling something between scallion and potato pancakes which were delicious.

After that came an orange granita intermezzo and then the main course - Patagonian Sand Perch (known as Salmon Blanco although it is not salmon) in a chayote puree with sauteed vegetables and a malbec/cherry reduction to sweeten it up a bit.  It was also excellent and perfectly cooked.  That little flower on top is the aforementioned fennel flower that tasted just like fennel.

Dessert arrived and it was a peach tart in a quinoa (interesting!) tart with a lemon verbena cream - light, sweet and a perfectly light end to a rather healthy meal.

We took our "burnt mate" drink in their garden and then said goodbye as we took a taxi home.

Our final full day in BA has been rather lazy so far.  We wandered the neighborhood for a store i loved called Antique Denim - where i bought one of my favorite blazers ever.  We found it and unfortunately it was vacant and for sale.  We stopped at a place that Caroline selected by sight (nice garden, people eating there) for a pasta lunch and we were underwhelmed again.

Fortunately, we've got an exciting dinner ahead of us at La Vineria Del Gualteria Bolivar - a tasting menu helmed by a former El Bulli chef in the San Telmo neighborhood.  Will report back on that and our other shenanigans shortly...

The Buenos Aires shenanigans continue here!