Buenos Aires Café East

By Mike Sutter
AMERICAN-STATESMAN RESTAURANT CRITIC
Thursday, September 10, 2009

If you've been wondering where the lunchtime town hall of Austin's restaurant scene might have gone since Las Manitas closed, maybe you could ask U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett. He was sitting in deep discussion at a four-top behind us on a recent afternoon at Buenos Aires Café East. Maybe Austin Fire Chief Rhoda Mae Kerr would know. She was sitting at the table in front of us.

The new Buenos Aires has arrived, to be sure. This avocado-green bunker on East Sixth Street shares tight company with the Good Knight and the East Side Showroom, but the original Buenos Aires Café on South First Street predates all of them, courtesy of founder Reina Morris, a native of Argentina.

Buenos Aires Café is a culinary microcosm of the Italian and Spanish immigrants who have called Argentina home, with input from the British and French as well, informing even the croissant-style flaky crusts of the carne picante (ground beef, olives and raisins) and verdura (spinach and ricotta and Parmesan cheeses) empanadas, the pair easily making a full breakfast at $2.59 each.

At lunch, the Milanesa plate ($9.99) was like chicken-fried steak without the gravy, two righteously pounded beef cutlets fried in herbed crumbs, served with drive-through-quality fries and a simple mixed-green salad with a light vinaigrette. If all chicken-fried steaks were this tender, this crisp and this well-seasoned, our state gravy intake likely would plummet.

The sandwiches are tricky, because I have to guess that anything served between the eye-rollingly crunchy and fresh baguettes here would taste great. Bologna? Bring it on. Peanut butter and jelly? Just say yes (if only).

The $13 'Lomito Beef' sandwich was a wonder of perfectly cooked tenderloin dressed simply with chimichurri, a spicy but balanced blend of herbs, oil and pepper flakes. I couldn't bring myself to add tomato and cheese for 50 cents apiece, because then the sandwich would have been $14, and that feels wrong. But I'd have liked the extra touch of flavor. Our side Caesar salad was uninspiring but still better than the french-fry option.

My guest said it best when he described the 'Chorizo Especial' sandwich ($8.99) as the lunch you'd get if four cart vendors at Disney World collided: bratwurst (bland and unchallenging, not the spicy chorizo we've come to love), roasted red pepper, modest tomato sauce, timid mozzarella, crusty French baguette. But the spinach side salad was right on, a toss of fresh spinach leaves, sweet-and-spicy pecans, feta cheese and olives.

Lunch service was a spotty, hurried affair. Our waitress never squared her shoulders to the table, always being pulled sideways by imaginary forces. If Buenos Aires is this crowded at lunch (our noontime experience took a full hour and a half from 'howdy' to 'how much'), maybe it's time to consider adding floor help. We gave up on a dessert that never showed up.

Too bad, because desserts at Buenos Aires deserve a review of their own. The pastry case is a blend of the exotic and familiar, stocked with a quince tart called a pastafrola ($4.99), sandwich cookies called alfajores (one with chalky cornmeal pastry and caramel for $1.99), a 'pionono' cake ($5.49) flavored with Kahlua and coffee, a moist dark-chocolate cake with three layers of strawberry mousse ($5.49) and a creamy quatro leches cake (insert 'tres'-related math joke here; it was exactly that much more superior) for $5.99. Crème brûlée ($5.99) was a mixed bowl, though. I liked the yin and yang of hot pepper and sugar in the freshly caramelized crust, but the custard underneath tasted like a chocolate Hunt's Snack Pack.

At dinner, the feel of Buenos Aires changes with the fading light. The space feels smaller and more intimate; the droplights soften the green walls and bathe the tables in a glow that invites softer conversation. The service, while hardly nighttime formal, couldn't have been more good-humored or sincere.

The wine list calls out with seductive flights of eccentric Argentinian styles, even if the glasses were covered with dishwasher spots, and the menu blossoms with new options: shepherd's pie (a $10.99 bowl of spiced beef, mashed potatoes and cheese), crêpes with mushroom and eggplant ($12.99, a vegetarian colleague's favorite) and a dish of gnocchi ($12.99) influenced by Italy but carving its own path with dense potato-herb, jalapeño-cilantro, sweet potato-chipotle and cinnamon-pumpkin dumplings. The dish tasted like a four-way fight, the flavors not quite coming together, but each one strong enough to stand on its own in a broth of artichokes, red peppers, mushrooms and haricots verts.

The dusky wild-card here is the chef's special, and we enjoyed every bite of the straightforward beef tenderloin with red pepper sauce, three well-cooked shrimp, mashed potatoes and haricots verts with red bell pepper. At $27.99, it was priced, seasoned, cooked and plated perfectly in line with many of the fancier houses in town, even the ones where other celebrated Austinites might go to escape the town-hall sunlight of early afternoon.

msutter@statesman.com; 912-5902

Buenos Aires Café East

1201 E. Sixth St. 382-1189, www.buenosairescafe.com.

Rating (casual dining):7.0 out of 10

Hours: Breakfast 9 to 11 a.m. and lunch 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays. Dinner 6 to 9:30 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays, until 10 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. Closed Sundays.

Prices: Empanadas $2.59. Salads $4.99-$7.99 ($1 less at lunch). Lunch sandwiches $3.99 (toasted ham and cheese) to $12.99 (beef tenderloin), averaging about $8.30. Lunch plates $8-$10. Dinner main courses $10.99 (shepherd's pie) to $27.99 (chef's surf-and-turf special), averaging around $14. Desserts $1.99 (alfajores) to $5.99 (crème brûlée, crêpes).

Payment:All major cards.

Bar:Beer (including Quilmes from Argentina) and wine (an education in Argentinian styles). About 22 Argentinian reds by the bottle ($21-$74) and 18 by the glass ($6-$16). About 15 Argentinian whites by the bottle ($25-$80) and 13 by the glass ($7-$12). Flights of three well-chosen reds or whites run $12-$15.

Wheelchair access:Yes.

What the rating means:A weighted average of scores for food, service, atmosphere and value.

Other locations:2414 S. First St. 441-9000.