Argentina - El Gaucho, SW7

Restaurant: El Gaucho

Location: 30 Old Brompton Road, London, SW7 3DL

Date of visit: 13 November 2010

Time of visit: 8.30pm

Steve and Elle ate: Chorizos criollos (Steve) and empanadas Argentinas (Elle) to start, Milanesa de carne (Steve) and tira de asado (Elle) for main

We finally managed to get back out on the road for the next restaurant, and Argentina was one of the countries we were looking forward to coming up to early on. The simple reason being, like the Argentinians, we like our meat. And we knew that would be in plenty supply in any Argentinian steakhouse that we visited.

There are a handful of well-known Argentinian chain restaurants in London, which is something I wanted to avoid. One of those is Gaucho. We opted for a restaurant named "El Gaucho", which has nothing to do with the chain. However, there are two related restaurants under this name - one in Chelsea, and one in South Kensington.

We travelled down to the South Kensington restaurant on the tube and arrived to find a very pleasant, but small, "shopfront", with narrow stairs leading underground to the restaurant itself.

Saturday night in Kensington and the small restaurant was pretty packed. Still, the waitress saw us in and to a table. The interior of the restaurant struck me as very wooden, literally. The furniture was made up of large sturdy tables and benches. Oddly, Italian football was being shown in the corner, direct from an Italian TV channel. I suppose picking up Argentinian TV on satellite is a bit tricky in London, but at least something in Spanish surely?!

Time ticked on and it became clear that our waitress was overworked and was slightly distracted from serving us. The time between arriving, ordering, and particularly receiving our drinks, was quite lengthy. It was clear for us to see why this was, but it was still a little disappointing nonetheless.

I like ambiance in any social situation, and while the chatter of the many people in the restaurant was creating that, it bothered me that there was no music being played of any kind. I notice these things.

Unfortunately I had my back to it, but Elle has a good view of the open kitchen which looked right out to the eating area of the restaurant. In fact, to reach the toilet facilities of the restaurant, you more or less need to enter the kitchen to get there!

The drinks came just before the starter. I always try and go for the "local" lager, and in this case it was a bottle of Quilmes. Elle had a glass of Argentinian white wine.

Finally the food arrived, with both our starters being presented to us on a large wooden slab. My large sausage (chorizos criollos) was just lying there rather unceremoniously alongside Elle's chicken pasty (empanadas Argentinas).

I actually really enjoyed the sausage. I'm finding it hard to elaborate on that. It was a big sausage, and it was pretty much as you'd expect a big sausage to be. Elle's starter, however, wasn't quite so straight forward. We had to guess the meat, as it quite clearly wasn't chicken as she had asked for. In the end, we agreed it was beef. So they got the order wrong. Thankfully, Elle has no aversion to eating beef so she just went ahead with it. No complaint was made. We don't like to make a fuss.

Between the time of the starter plates/slab being taken away and the mains arriving, no-one had replaced the cutlery we had used. So we reused. And in true fashion, both the mains arrived on a large slab which pretty much doubled-up as a tabletop.

My main was thin steak deep fried and coated in breadcrumbs, on top of a bed of chips. Elle was presented with a vast array of ribs, again on a base of chips.

I immediately wondered how I was going to manage this. It looked immensely greasy, but then it would be, having been 100% deep fried! And eating it was some going. The steak was very easy to cut and chew, but after a while it did become hard work due to the amount of grease. Unfortunately, I was unable to finish the main. Elle also did her best with the ribs, but they were also very greasy, and very fatty. I'm sure she won't mind me saying, but she is particularly fussy when it comes to fatty meat, so I was faced with watching her play around with the ribs to find the meat, and discard the rest.

Overall, it wasn't a bad experience at all, but it was always going to compare directly to our last restaurant outing, which was that amazing experience at the Angolan restaurant in East London. This was a far cry from that.

Cost of meal: £42 approx (without drinks).