Opposite my Bs As hotel were three restaurants in a row: the Good, the Bad & the Ugly. More like the Good, the Bad & the Overcooked.
Cumaná was the Good… and the Friendly (i.e., not as unfriendly as everywhere else makes it the Friendly!).
Colour scheme is deep red and they turn down the lights in the evening so you can’t see much of what you’re eating. Maybe that’s why I liked it!
Turning up at 7pm is a great idea in any Argentine restaurant. No one is there apart from you, some Americans and people with babies. Everyone else heads out around 9 or 10pm, maybe even later!
I’ve come across this lots of times now, crayons at every table. I suspect it’s not just for little kids!
As you can see, I was here with all my Argentinian friends.
Hurrah! The Pinguino arrived! Often house wine is served in varying sizes of Pinguino (= Penguin, of course). I thought they were charming and the house wine here, a Malbec, was perfectly palatable, even though it cost around the same as a bottle of water.
Course number one: empanadas. I selected a spicy beef (really good, like a casserole) and a cheese and ham (poor quality cheese and ham to be honest). But tasty.
Main course was chicken and salad. The topping on the chicken is the ‘spicy mix’. It was really just lots of very finely chopped (blitzed?) raw onion. Now, I can’t eat raw onion (heartburn city) so I was not a fan of this. Plus raw onion can be nice in a salad but as a dressing, not convinced. I like crispy chicken, so the underlying product was good.
A note on salads. Most salads did not come dressed or with a side of dressing (nor was one available). You can see lime in the picture, this was fine – but there was also no oil. Each to their own.
The delivery drivers (Cumaná does pizza too) were roaring up on their fancy bikes, so that warranted a gratuitous photograph.
I had been wondering where the room shaking music had been coming from and I discovered it! Shock bar was next door and doing a roaring trade! Good to know.
Full of limey salad it was off to bed for another night in sunny Buenos Aires. Toodle-oo!
