The Other Way: Pork Neck and Vodka

I went to Olsen, Gorriti 5870, for the first time and, weary of steak and pasta, opted for a dish called “Bondiola Ahumado Olsen.” It was translated as, “Smoked Pork Neck Olsen.” Done and done.

What came out was two decent sized pieces of pork, set on a bed of mashed potatoes and covered in a fruit salsa. It was delicious. The outside was nicely crispy, while the inside was still moist and came apart easily. One of the guys I was with, who once worked in the kitchen at one of my old Seattle favorites, Flying Fish, and I declared it the best meat dish we had eaten to date in Buenos Aires. My opinion on this matter has not changed. This may be a town of carne, but I love their pork.

For Walt’s last night in BA, we decided to check out El Bistro. El Bistro is the restaurant at the Faena Hotel + Universe in Puerto Madero. Essentially, some guy, Alan Faena, took a 1902 brick grainery and hired Phillipe Starck to create a “lifestyle” hotel for the rich and famous. It is the kind of place where you enter through a 32 foot tall red glass door and listen to soft, trancey music over the loudspeaker while checking out photos of Alan with Madonna or Lenny Kravitz. El Bistro is the signature restaurant in the hotel and is decorated in all white with, I would not joke about this, ceramic unicorn heads on the wall.

I believe the whole project was meant to be the crown jewel in Alan’s massive Puerto Madero redevelopment play, called the Faena Art District, where he would develop the hotel and then follow it with apartments and residential condo towers, whose units would be sold and rented to people attracted to the lifestyle brand he had created. The shocking number of cranes in the sky in Puerto Madero and the Miamiesque site of high rise condo towers that appear to have only two or three occupants leads me to believe that this vision needs some tweaking.

When we arrived at the Faena we discovered that my English must be as bad as my Spanish. Despite specifically requesting a reservation at El Bistro, we found out that El Bistro is closed on Tuesdays and that our reservation was for El Mercado. No thanks. We are here for unicorn heads.

So, back to Olsen. We started our dinner, as seemed appropriate, with the 5+5. That is a starter dish, for two people, that consists of five different pairs of canapés, each accompanied by a different beaker full of vodka. For the record, the beakers consisted of straight, bloody mary, pepper, cassis and, uh, a fruit of some kind. My memory started to get a little fuzzy after the fourth one.

My pork neck was once again excellent. Walt’s grilled chicken was also good, but, given that the seared tuna I tried previously was also only decent, I think that diners should stick to the pork neck, canapés and vodka until further research is done.