Experiences to share? I recently tried Paladar Buenos Aires. Never again.
I have eaten at this closed door restaurant a couple of times in the past and thought it quite good. As I am Jewish and from
NYC my curiosity was piqued when I received their email notice that the menu for the weekend would be Jew food specifically borscht with salmon kneidelach, pastrami as main course, and banana strudel (350 with flights of wine, 250 without wine).
I came with low expectations since I know Katz's, Zabar's, Pastrami King, Carnegie deli and could not imagine pastrami advertised as a main course in BA anything near as good as that approaching the stuff served in the aforementioned NY joints. Despite my low expectations I came away very disappointed.
The borscht served luke warm tasted like ground beets boiled to the point the flavor was just about totally eliminated. The salmon kneidlach were also flavorless. I would not have been able to identify the little round balls in the dish as fresh salmon...perhaps canned salmon.The mascarpone in lieu of sour cream added panache, but couldn't rescue this dish.
The thick 2 or 3 slabs of pastrami that followed were worse. Man, where did they get this recipe? The meat was too highly spiced, too fatty and lacking in any semblance to my prior pastrami experiences (of which there have literally been hundreds). It was a spicy roast beef more like a poor Chinese dish than the real thing.
The "prepostre" and postre of banana strudel were also failures. Advertised as crispy, the postre was a soggy banana accompanied by a bit of chocolate coated ice cream that vaguely reminded me of a Mr. Klondike bar, only not as tasty.
Service was not quite as poor as the food ,but it, too, was below acceptable levels. And of course, the check was 100 pesos more than it should have been.
I could have forgiven chef owner Pablo for this travesty because, at least, he made an effort to add a gourmet touch to basic Jewish cuisine. It was a failure, but thanks for trying. When I wrote to him the next day advising him that he should not serve this menu again and asking him if he wanted further specific comments (I have occasionally written about food for a couple of local publications) he wrote back "banning" me from his restaurant. Talk about classic Argentine arrogance!. No harm. No foul. Frankly the meal was so bad I would likely not have returned to Paladar BA.
