Canter Bridge

Not for the faint of heart is the effort to discover a true Buenos Aires dining experience outside of that Argentine capital. The middle-aged men who wait on table there are not moonlighting on, say, their day job as a CPA. They are meseros. ‘Always been, always will be. Serving you your Argentine beef is what they do. They respect the meat, smile only as necessary, and never say, ‘Hi, my name is Trish, I’ll be taking care of you tonight.’

So it was with a little fear and trepidation that I turned a recent business trip to Seattle into an opportunity to take my Latin America-raised son (now a sophomore at Seattle Pacific University) to the Buenos Aires Grill, an establishment he’d scoped out during a city food tour with his mother.

Our first impression as we entered the restaurant was the aroma of wood smoke and beef. Who knows how deeply it has penetrated into the timbers. If, God forbid, this locale is ever turned into, say, a laundromat, all the scrubbing in the world will (happily) fail to eradicate this smell. The dimly but appropriately lit dining room successfully hints at a bonairense atmosphere.

I rarely pass up the opportunity to drink a Malbec when it’s on offer. This Argentine varietal puts the lie to any ‘red plonk’ reputation that might still linger unfairly over Argentine labels. The Grill has lots of Malbecs on its wine list. We enjoyed a mid-priced bottle that more than satisfied.

Craving red meat and perhaps lacking imagination, my son and I each ordered the mixed grill. It was served, attractively, on a sizzling raised platform from which the diner lowers his treasure piece by piece onto the plate. This is no accident. True to its genre, the Grill serves an enormous quantity of meat. Through the course of the meal, one does actually find himself lowering yet another piece of delicious chicken or—of course—beef for yet another go at finishing the thing up. An enormous plate of delicious fries weighed down the opposite end of the table.

The meat was exceptionally tasty. The real way to go at a Brazilian or Argentine (the two neighbors compete ferociously for top honors in football, beef, and all other areas of human experience) steak is to forgo anything that does not come from a cow (the ‘warmup meat’) and concentrate on the red stuff. We didn’t do that on our first journey to the Grill, choosing instead the anthology of possibilities that is the mixed grill in order to see what they could do. But we’ll tuck into a simple, monochrome steak experience next time based on the pleasant outcome of our trial.

Our waiter was attentive, friendly, and definitely non-Argentine. Perhaps it was too much to expect otherwise. My son walked away with an estimated four pounds of steak in a doggy bag to help ease his next week’s passage through this vale of tears.

The price tag is not a light one, but represents good value. We’ll be back, probably on one of the nights when the Tango is danced.

This is Seattle, not Buenos Aires. But for a moment, you’re not quite sure.