A gluttonous orgy of steak and dessert

It took until about noon today for everyone to be ready to leave the house. Nothing around here opens until 11am anyway, so while ordinarily not getting out until noon would drive me up the wall (I was up at 8am...), I was okay with it today. When we finally did leave, we walked down Honduras, one of the main shopping streets in Palermo, to the Plazoleta Julio Cortaza, a little roundabout wrapped around a park, where on weekends dozens of arts and crafts stands are set up selling lovely artisan goods. Since today was not a weekend, the Plazoleta was deserted, but the cafes surrounding it had let their tables spill out into the sidewalks, since it was an unseasonable beautiful day today - 60s and sunny. We ordered some sandwiches outside at a cute little cafe. I had a smoked salmon and arugula sandwich on homemade spinach bread - yum! After that, of course we had to go get some Argentine helado (ice cream).

People talk about how good the gelato in Eurpoe is, but I think the best ice cream I have had anywhere is in Buenos Aires. We stumbled upon what is as of today my favorite heladeria, an artisan ice cream shop called Persicco, where the ice cream is served in comma shaped sugar cone dishes, or you can take it home in comma shaped styrofoam dishes with lids. Dulce de leche ice cream is definitely my favorite, and that particular flavor is ubiquitous to Buenos Aires. I have tried it at many different ice cream shops over the past few years here, but Persicco blew them all away!

After ice cream, Gavin and I tagged along with Jeremy and his son to the Natural Science Museum. It had a really nice dinosaur skeletons exhibition, along with the usual array of taxidermied wildlife, bugs skewered on pins, etc. We were pretty much the only people in the museum, and I guess we looked like troublemakers, because the security guard stalked us the whole time. :)

After the museum, we headed back to our house to chill for a bit before dinner. We and a large group of people from the conference had a reservation at La Cabrera, one of our absolute favorite restaurants in the WORLD. The steak is INCREDIBLE; we look forward to this all year! :)

Since we were a large group of 25 people, we did a prix fixe dinner instead of ordering from a menu. From the moment we sat down for about three hours, we were "subjected" to plate after plate of amazing food and bottomless glasses of malbec. Avocado and beet salad, two kinds of baked herbed cheese, the best potatoes au gratin-ish thing I have ever had, chorizo, blood sausage (I got brave and tried it - ew), and of course, steak, steak and more steak. Lomo (tenderloin) is my favorite cut by far - exceptionally tender, and I even ate it pretty much rare (I NEVER order rare steak), but they also had bife de chorizo, a few scattered plates of chicken and pork. After we were all slowing downand had pretty much cleaned up these massive amounts of meat, they brought out ANOTHER round of plates - this round was steak wrapped in BACON. We bravely ralleyed ourselves for round two, and managed to put down this second serving of absolutely incredible steak. After that, we thought we were done... But then the waiters came by and put down new paper table coverings... and HUGE plates of desserts - there was about one of these plates for each four people. Each plate had a pound (NOT an exaggeration) of flan, a pound of tiramisu, a little chocolate lava cake, ice cream with berries and a dish of dulce de leche to top it off. We once again managed to almost finish off those plates, and then the waiters brought ANOTHER round of the same!

Yes, the food experience at La Cabrera never ceases to amaze, nor leave us 10 pounds heavier than when we walked in the door. :)

After dinner we plodded back to the house, where I lie down in one of the outdoor lounge chairs beside the pool to enjoy a few last breaths of the delicious night air, while inside Gavin and the others opened yet another bottle of malbec. Then we dragged ourselves upstairs to crash into into dreams of steak and wine. :)

The incredible dessert plate.

Gavin and I happily gorging ourselves in La Cabrera.