Saturday, 22 August 2015

Two great gourmet options in Buenos Aires



Buenos Aires is a city that rarely sleeps. 

The locals love their red wine and their red meat as much as they love their tango and football - and often they do not head out for dinner until 10 or 11pm. 

Here are two very different wining and dining hot spots that should be on the itinerary of anyone visiting the Argentina capital. 

Floreria Atlantico

From the outside, Floreria Atlantico looks like a busy flower shop that also sells wine. But the people milling around are not wanting to buy flowers, they are waiting to be admitted down a set of stairs to one of the most popular cocktail and wine bars in the capital – an after-work hangout for chefs and hospitality workers that is open until 4am at weekends. In addition to Argentine tapas (think dishes like barbecued kidneys cooked over fire wood, frog's legs, morcilla sausages and char-grilled octopus), are huge steaks on the parrillada and patrons drinking shots and colourful cocktails (the local specialities are listed as “criollos”). This basement speakeasy is long, narrow – and extremely vibrant. The later it gets the busier it becomes. Floreria Atlantico was named among the world's top 50 bars for 2015. Main courses $20-30; tapas from $10.


Uco Restaurant, Hotel Fierro 


Take an Irish chef, home-made ingredients and a garden setting in one of Buenos Aires' most funky boutique hotels and you have the unique ambience of Uco, a new eatery that is drawing sellout crowds to the Palermo Hollywood quarter of the Argentine capital. It is named after one of the wine districts in the Mendoza region and has a wine list curated by Andres Rosberg, one of Argentina's leading sommeliers. The food here is thoroughly modern. Chef Ed Holloway serves up dishes like ceviche-style salmon carpaccio with crispy fried plantain and mango salad, or perhaps crispy-skinned suckling pig with roast butternut puree and pickled vegetables, or maybe an 18-hour-cooked shoulder of Patagonian lamb. At dinner a seven-course degustation menu is on offer for $68, and each course can be paired to an oustanding Argentine wine.
www.fierrohotel.com 

For more great Argentine wining and dining venues see www.traveller.com.au

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