Butchery De Bariloche – Not A Real Feel Of Bariloche

“I want meat!”

One evening my mom said “I want meat!” so naturally we started looking for a nice place for an evening meat meal. Usually we just buy a good steak at the butcher and eat it “à la plancha” at home, but this time the steaks were frozen and it was too late to go to the butcher to buy fresh meat so we reserved a table at “Butchery De Bariloche” a place dedicated to meat, chocolate, ice-cream and wine – the specialties of the town Bariloche in Argentina. Just before leaving home I found a link in the “rest.co.il” website to get a free glass of the house wine or a dessert for a dinner for two. I sent this coupon by sms to my Android phone like the link suggested and we were on our way.

The Tour

Entering the restaurant we instantly encountered the hostess. She asked: ‘have you ever been to our restaurant?”, we haven’t, so she explained the concept of the place to us. We got a verbal story, then a small tasting tour, first the chocolates and then the house wine. We finished the tour at the butcher’s vitrine where one should be impressed by the view of the fresh meats and different cuts. The blackboard stated the price per 100 gr (24-58 NIS not including the Cobe beef which is much more expensive).

Posters Vs. High Tech Feeling

But this wasn’t the time to order yet, we were told. First we need to get sited  The dinning room is big and dark. In one side you see posters of different views from Bariloche and under that a long wall filled with customer’s business cards. “You can donate a card yourself”. The other side of the restaurant has a more high-tech feeling. Black wall with integrated wooden panels, a higher deck and two different areas separated. Big wooden black tables and heavy chairs. The restaurant was mostly empty that time.

Sitting at the table our waiter arrived and asked, yet again, if we ever been to this restaurant. Then he started telling us the “story” once again. We stopped him because it was just too much, we did not come here to hear your story.

Please Feel Uncomfortable 

I started off by showing the coupon on my mobile, to get it out of the way. It turned out to be a hassle. The waiter said we had to print it out so it’s worthless like that. After insisting, double checking, calling the manager, checking again, asking some other guy and taking my phone with him and making us feel uncomfortable about the whole thing, we got the verbal permission that we can use this coupon.

Going Back To The Butcher

The menu was long and mainly filled with stories about the history and story of the place (which is brand new) and a full explanation about each cut of meat. We had to select the starters and wine and for the main course, the meat, we have to go back to the butcher. I went in behalf of all of us but kept thinking that it doesn’t make sense that every single diner will go around just to choose his main course. To me it seemed like an unreasonable system. Many cuts of beef were limited to order above a certain weight. We ended up taking the Prime Rib which is the Entrecôte on the bone (32 NIS P/100gr). The minimum was 800gr but the piece of meat he had was 900 so we took the whole thing for the three of us (less than 250gr per diner if you consider the weight of the bone).

Eating And Drinking At Last

For the starter we took the Steak Tartar (40 NIS) because the Sweetbreads and Gnocchi dish was missing. The house wine we tried wasn’t great so we asked to try the two other red wines by the glass, which were Argentinian wines. They were both pretty good and we choose the 2008 Catena Zapata Malbec Argentino (34 NIS per glass) and enjoyed it very much.

The Steak Tartar of beef filet was excellent. A quail egg on top, some capers and avocado carapaccio on the bottom.

I like tartars. A successful start to the meal!

The meat came to our table on a huge heating grill thing. It was a Flintstones style piece of meat.

The side dishes were automatically chosen for us. We got mashed potatoes, lightly grilled vegetables and potato wedges.

Chimichurri and tomato salsa served with the meat. The chimichuri was good but not enough for all of us. At the end of the meal we got a refill but it was too little too late.

Barak took the whole thing to his plate to cut in three pieces.

The meat itself was very good. Level of cooking – we asked medium rare but it wasn’t evenly cooked. Getting closer to the bone it was totally rare. It’s not easy to grill meat to the perfect level. It’s harder to do with big cuts and it’s the hardest when the cut is on the bone. But this is something we expect to be done professionally when we go to a restaurant that specializes in meats.

We placed the rare pieces back on the table heating grill to get them done to our liking. We were pretty hungry so we couldn’t wait that long but it was better. We sent back the bone pretty clean. No one ate the corn..

The desserts didn’t sound that tempting but we had our one free dessert so we chose the special of the day, something with chocolate warm cake and ice-cream. It was nice and sticky but didn’t pass the “kitkat” test. The ice-cream which was supposed to be done with a Bariloche recipe was nothing better than average.

Conclusions 

The bill came to almost 400 NIS for the three of us, splitting one starter, one free dessert and one glass of wine and nothing else to drink. A bit too much to what we got in my opinion. No doubt next time we will just buy our own streaks at the butchery, this was our resolution.

I myself have been to Bariloche, you can view my public web album, and must admit this restaurant is very far from anything you can find in Bariloche. There, I went into a restaurant I asked for a steak. Red. I got my steak, my bread and wine and that’s it. Simple, well made, no hassle.

A real Bariloche steak

This restaurant takes itself too seriously and it’s heavy and exhausting. I don’t want to hear the story about the restaurant three times, feel uncomfortable when I got a coupon and have to argue with the manager about it. Then get an Okay steak with boring side dishes.

Butchery De Bariloche 

Ha’Barzel 4, Ramat Hachayal

077-5309700

http://butchery.co.il/

ביקור שני , תאריך הביקור: אפריל 2014

Pause Play Play Prev | Next