Behind Closed Doors in Buenos Aires

We’ve all got one of those friends: the wannabe chef who loves nothing more than spending hours in the kitchen preparing elaborate feasts, roasting, reducing, blending, and dreaming up the perfect wine pairs. You jump at the message announcing the next gourmet extravaganza. If only you had one in every city, right?

Thanks to the new trend of closed door dinner clubs, informal restaurants set up in the homes of chefs tired of the grind of restaurants, you are one step closer to living the dream of intimate gastronomic feasts wherever you go.

In Buenos Aires, you are spoiled for choice. The trend has been around since the nineties, but has taken off in the last few years. Argentina’s decidedly turbulent economic history, complicated labor laws, and sky-high rent for the prime locations are big drivers behind the movement back to the comforts of home, but are not the sole reasons.

Diego Felix, chef behind Collectivo Felix in Chacarita gets to the heart of it, “having the dinners in my home gives me the freedom to continue traveling, learning, and sharing my style of cooking without being tied to a fixed location. The best is that I can choose the menu that same day, with whatever I find freshest in the market.”

The world of pop-ups, food carts, and closed door restaurants has opened the way for chefs to cook the food that most excites them, and we the eaters are reaping and devouring all the fruit of their passion with glee.

There are around 50 restaurants a puerta cerrada these days in Buenos Aires; TLK has found the cream of the crop. hese are the experts, the innovators, the best places to fill your belly in Buenos Aires.

Next, the best closed door restaurants in Buenos Aires…

ILatina

With just over a year since opening, this project by Colombian brothers Santiago and Camilo Macias has quickly taken over the spotlight of the Buenos Aires food scene. Chef Santiago focusses on dishes and flavors from his native Colombia, but roams happily throughout Latin America for inspiration, most notably bringing in the best of Peru and the Caribbean. They operate out of a beautiful old house in Buenos Aires’ food zone for those in the know, Villa Crespo, from Tuesdays to Saturdays, adding a superb brunch to the list once a month. They serve a fixed seven course tasting menu with bottle-rocket offerings like caramelized shrimp with spicy pineapple and fennel or grilled octopus with a risotto of maize, achiote, and pancetta; for good measure tack on the optional wine pairing by sommelier Camilo. Reserve well in advance and come hungry.

Collectivo Felix

Diego Felix and his wife Sanra run an intimate supper club from their home, serving a pescatarian, five course tasting menu. (It can be tweaked for vegans and vegetarians on demand.) They only open on weekends during the summer months, for the rest of the year they take their organic, socially aware and delicious kitchen on the road in North America. The menu is ever-changing, dependent totally on their garden and the market, but a glimpse of a recent meal included Bolivian peanut soup with Swiss pesto and caramelized tomatoes; a Portobello tamal in a pipian sauce with stir-fried crickets.

Casa Coupage

We’ve spoken about this essential stop on the Buenos Aires wine scene before; Sommeliers Inés Mendieta and Santiago Mymicopulo transmit their passion and resounding knowledge of Argentine wine to their visitors from Wednesday to Saturday. The wines come first, and always impress, but the seasonal menu created by chef Pablo Bolzán makes a fine dance partner. Think wild hare and ricotta canelones with a powerful Mendocino Cabernet from Bodega Casarena.

Next, three more closed door restaurants in Buenos Aires…

Cocina Sunae

Christina Sunae, an US native with Philippine roots has taken it upon herself to introduce Argentina to the true flavors of South-East Asia, no mean feat in a city where black pepper is looked upon with suspicion and people tell stories about that time they tried chili. After only four years of spicing up porteño nights from her living room, now a second home for the city’s Asian ambassadors, she has won so many converts that she is thinking of moving out of her home and giving the space back to her husband and two kids. Recent highlights were Kare Kare, Oxtail braised in spicy peanut sauce served with vegetables, steamed rice and black bean bagoong, or Sinigang, a traditional Filipino soup made with pork broth, shrimp, taro root and chinese spinach.

NOLA Buenos Aires

Another North-American turning up the gastronomic heat in Buenos Aires is chef Liza Puglia. She grew up in New Orleans and cut her culinary teeth in a top Mexican restaurant in New York and is now serving a spicy fusion of these two from her Palermo home. Combine hard-to-find flavors and Puglia’s high energy presence in the kitchen and the dining room and you have what makes NOLA (top) ideal puerta cerrada experience – intimate, one-table dining where recipes are exchanged, friendships are formed over jazz and gumbo and no-one really wants to leave at the end of the night. And then there’s the bourbon cream pecan pie… As if that wasn’t enough, she’s doing a special Wednesday night artisan beer evening with the guys from Broeders beer (brewed on the roof of her house), pairing their beers with treats like chicken wings and pulled pork sandwiches, NOLA-style, bravo.

Adentro Dinner Club

Most visitors to Buenos Aires touch down, head straight to the closest parrilla, and liberally apply beef and Malbec until stomach cramps kick in. Not a terrible idea as things go, but it could be better, much better. Argentine –US couple, Gabriel and Kelly offer visitors the chance to sample a true Argentine asado, a long, slow evening of good wine, good chat and an apparently infinite supply of food, all with the comforts of home like an outdoor terrace where you sip welcome cocktails and a lounge to, well, lounge in when you simply can’t sustain the weight of your belly anymore. They have it all and then some, the grilled provoleta cheese, the home-made empanadas, champagne grilled shrimp, and heaps of top class Argentine beef. And just when you can’t imagine eating any more, Kelly brandishes a blowtorch and a dark cacao crème brûlée, and Gabriel cracks the basil liqueur with a knowing grin. This is the Argentina you have been hoping to get to know.