Dan P.
Yelp
Okay, for the last couple of years, people have been carrying on about the amazing small plate Asian-influenced, particularly Indian-influenced, food at Gran Dabbang, Raúl Scalabrini Ortíz 1543, Palermo. The place even made it onto the list of Latin America's 50 Best Restaurants last year, coming in at #38. The chef-owner is the driving force behind the Masticar food festival here in BA. So you'd think I'd have been there, right? No. No I hadn't. I don't know why. It's another one of those... "I don't want to stand in line" things, and in general, 8pm, when they open, is the early end of when we like to dine.
This week, I texted a friend and we decided to meet up there and see what the hype was all about....
You know the Thumper Rule, right? "If you can't say something nice, don't say nothing at all." Well yeah, Thumper's mom, but that's a double negative that actually means to say something.... I'm more... cartoonist Emily Flake version, "...say something clever but devastating".
Fresh figs with Buffalo ricotta, cactus fruit with sunflower and sweet potato leaves. 210 pesos. Ummm... one and half under-ripe green figs, still crunchy, over a searingly acidic cactus fruit puree, maybe a tablespoon of some grainy ricotta, some red onions, some herbs, and some bug-eaten, browning leaves to wrap it all up in. Unpleasant is the nicest word I can come up with.
Smoked pork neck lardo with cane syrup, some kind of water (the menu says "agua de" but doesn't specify of what), plums, anise cornbread. 260 pesos. Is that nice thick grilled thing the papada, the smoked pork jowl? No, the smoked pork jowl is that white wisp the size of a single rasher of bacon, peaking out from behind the burnt cornbread. A few bits of sliced plum and a handful of sliced almonds. I'm looking for the hidden cameras... this is a joke, right?
Duck livers with spicy tomato sauce, fenugreek leaves, plantain and cashews. 320 pesos. Okay, flavor-wise, we kind of like this one. The duck livers play nicely off the griddle plantain segments, the cashews add a nice crunch, I don't know that I've ever tried fenugreek leaves before, they have a nice flavor, and the tomato sauce is actually spicy and tasty. But the duck livers are so overcooked they're dry and chalky. This one is a good idea, but misses the mark by about 2-3 minutes in the pan.
Quail marinated in rica-rica (an Andean medicinal herb), endives with guava, umeboshi plums, and huacatay. 350 pesos. Basically a big pile of cold, endive leaves marinated in guava pulp, probably two whole endives on the plate, separated. The quail, once again overcooked (the leg/thing part was juicy, the breast was dry). The umeboshi gives a nice salty-sour hit when you get a little of it, more of that would be good. And while I like huacatay, the Amazon black mint that we use a bit in our Peruvian cooking, it doesn't pair well with anything else on the plate. We finish off the cold endive leaves - they might actually be, on their own, the best thing we ate.
Service is friendly from our waitress, though she has a tendency to get sidetracked, and being the only one, at one point when she's been in a conversation with our neighboring table for over ten minutes while we wait to order (and not a conversation related to their dinner or the restaurant), I interrupt them and ask if it's possible we, and the rest of the restaurant, could have her back for a moment. The woman at the table looks around at the other tables waiting, and apologizes for the "kidnapping". Not your fault ma'am, it's the waitress' job to pay attention to the room, not yours.
But, the actual serving of things is different. Wine is served as if it's bottled water - the bottle is shown to me, without comment, opened, and poured. No tasting, no checking, no nothing, and she walks away. And like the food, this ain't cheap. With the exception of I think one bottle of white down around 350 pesos, the rest of the wine list starts at 520 pesos and goes on up to around 1200. The food is served by the cooks, not by the waitress, and like any place that does that, it can be variable. The first two dishes are served with detailed descriptions of what they are. The second dishes are more or less tossed on the table with "livers" and "quail" before a different cook turns on his heel and walks away.
Overall? The room is kind of basic at best - no frills pressed wood tables, uncomfortable chairs, little decor. Service, as noted. Food, I don't get it, and really expensive for really small portions - we were fine with the prices until we saw the size of the plates. I don't really see the "Asian-" or "Indian-" influence either - I mean, a couple of dots of umeboshi plum puree and some sweet potato leaves don't quite cover that. Sorry, but for me, this is the proverbial "the emperor has no clothes" moment. There's literally nothing about the experience that either of us liked. And with tip, it came in at 2000 pesos, and we left hungry and dissatisfied.
