La Cabrara

Cabrera 5099, Palermo Viejo - To round out our week of new restaurants (almost, we're headed to a new place tonight too - it's been a spoiling kind of week :) ) we finally decided to try La Cabrera. This place has been recommended to us by multiple people, but we could never get our act together early enough to make reservations...until our anniversary this past Monday. I made reservations on Sunday at the original La Cabrera location, they have separate location called La Cabrera Norte (both of which are located on the same street, only a block or two apart), most certainly due to the fact that they are incredibly busy. This place could be summed up in one word: MEAT. La Cabrera is known for it's amazing meat, although most places in Bs.As. are known for the great meat so this is not any sort of revelation, but they went about it in a slightly different manner. The menu is a double-sided over-sized sheet of paper with one full side dedicated to meat. Every kind of meat you can think of, from the gross - Small Intestines, to the intriguing - Long American Ribs and Kobe beef (though significantly more expensive than the alternative, clearly), to the delicious - the rib eyes, tenderloins and other known cuts that we are accustomed to. We both planned on ordering a tenderloin (lomo) but each of us wanted a different "style" of steak, we were were going to order two. The waiter told us that the menu items were "para compartir", a phrase we had heard before (since we Americans eat like 5 times the food that people in other countries consume, we are often told that we are ordering too much food, which is both embarrassing and amusing) so we replied that we were really hungry and 2 orders would be fine. Thank goodness he stopped us - the steaks we were ordering were 800 ounces (~28 ounces). O.M.G. It's impossible to tell from the one horrible picture I took (at the top of this post), but we basically got four 6-8 ounce filets plus lots of side dishes when we ordered A menu item (pictured much more elegantly from this picture on the right that I stole from Google images). The table next to us was a group of 3 Australian guys that also insisted on ordering their own dishes, although they did not head the waiter's warning when they were advised to share. I thought they were going to fall off their chairs when three - count them, THREE - 800-900 gram rib eyes came to their table. Holy Meat Overdose.

La Cabrera round-up: This place exceeded our expectations in terms of food quality and serving efficiency. Our waiter was friendly, knowledgeable, and efficient. We loved the number of side items and sauces that we received with each course; bread, appetizer and main dish. Other than the steak, the bread and proveletto appetizer that we ordered were nothing special. The main attraction was the meat, and it was unbelievable. This is a great place for visitors (we most certainly will take our families here over Christmas) and for the shock value of these ginormous cuts of meat. If you're looking for an authentic Argentinean parilla, this may not be the right place to go. La Cabrera is definitely tailored to tourists, expect to hear lots of English (and French and German etc) spoken by the clientele, which can distract from the authenticity, even if the food is amazing. Last note - prices are insanely low for the amount/quality of food you receive, after an appetizer, a glass of wine, 2 soft drinks and the steak, we had a bill of less than US$45.