R40

Summary

Looking on Yelp, we found that this new Argentine restaurant opened up on Vernon Blvd pretty recently in Long Island City. The menu has a lot of interesting and affordable meat dishes. It’s great that this street is opening a lot of cool restaurants of various cuisines. It appears they have a patio in the back that would be pretty awesome once the weather warms up. I can imagine this place being a super popular hot spot in the foreseeable future.

The drinks were pretty good. On the left is a glass of Torrontés wine, which is from Alhambra 2018, Mendoza, Argentina. The wine is very good for my palette. I couldn’t tell you about what it tastes like except I thought it was very crisp and light and not too dry. On the right is the Bandolero cocktail, which is vida mezcal with cazadores reposado, aji amarillo, honey, and lemon. This was also good too, as it resembles a smokey strong but well blended mezcal cocktail.

We got 2 empanadas. The first was Al Cuchillo, which has filet mignon, olives, raisin, and egg. This was pretty good as it gave me fond memories of eating frozen meat burritos from the market. Keep in mind that I am sure the ingredients are very good, but the taste of it has that flavor from those $1 meat burritos. I actually like that flavor. The second was Crab & Shrimp, which has jumbo lump blue crab and shrimp. This was also good too. They actually give you fairly decent portions of crab in it. It was also very good. The crust on both were nice and toasty. I forgot what the sauce was, but it reminded me of a dill type of dressing.

The arroz negro came with a prawn, fried calamari, and saffron aioli. Make sure to squeeze the lemon on top. This dish was just as fantastic as what the picture shows. The rice was nicely cooked, and the prawn was mostly edible with the shell (minus parts of the head). The flavor profile was similar to a wet paella / risotto hybrid. The citrus from the lemon gave it a nice spark at the end. We really enjoyed this dish.

The parrillada for two was a monster. The menu says it’s suppose to come with skirt steak, short rib, sweetbread, chorizo, morcilla (blood sausage), chicken thigh and was served with greens and a housemade flatbread. The skirt steak was delicious. It was cooked a nice medium rare, and it was super tender with the charcoal flavor from the coal. The short rib reminded me of the Korean short ribs. I think these ribs were a little too fatty for me, but if you cut around the fat, the meat was good and tender. The sweetbread was delicious and had a nice char to it. It was void of any organ flavors and had a decent amount of fattiness to it. The chorizo was my preference over the blood sausage. The chorizo was like your normal sausage with a ton of herbs in it. The blood sausage was good, but it definitely had a little more iron flavors to it. The casing did not hold the blood well compared to normal Korean blood sausage, but it was alright. The chicken thigh was fantastic. It was tender with a lot of the coal flavor. The platter for 2 can probably feed 3 people if you order appetizers.

With our paid check, we were also served 2 small dulce leche cookies. These were pretty good. At first glance, I thought they’d be macarons, but the consistency was more of a regular cookie where it kind of crumbles and doesnt hold its form. It was pretty good.

Service for us, despite some select Yelp reviews, was pretty good. We arrived at 5:30 PM on a Saturday night and were seated promptly. There was some wait for the parrilada, but the pacing overall was good. They kept the water filled in our glasses all night.

Final Verdict

We like this place a lot especially for the Long Island City area. There were some parts of the meat that were a bit fatty, but overall the food was very good especially at the price. We recommend that you get earlier reservations than later. When we left at 7 PM, the place was packed.

Yelp Jabs

And on top of that, an additional hour for our 2 main entrees. Maybe they were having a off night, as they are still fairly new.

That is unfortunate but to be expected. For those that try to be “firsts” in dining, there’s always a sacrifice to be made. Restaurants will be learning how to organically adjust their service the first couple weeks before they figure out the right tempo. It’s usually not a good idea to be “first” to a restaurant when they just opened up.

Entrees (parrillada & dry age ribeye) were not as good as we hoped. For the price of the entire meal it didn’t seem worthwhile.

This person probably doesn’t venture much into Manhattan and stays out in Queens. I think for the area AND for NYC, it’s pretty competitive.