Reservations needed for dinner in BA? What about Tango?
 

Going to BA next Friday and husband and I hope to eat up a storm. Do we need to make reservations now or is that something that we can take care when we arrive? And is the same true for Tango?

If you plan to go out to one of the more popular restaurants such as Osaka, you will need to make a reservation several days in advance. For most restaurants, same day reservations are ok.

Are you thinking about a tango show or a tango dance hall/milonga?

Tango show. Don't think I'm up to doing it in public quite yet!

You can reserve at almost any restaurant one day in advance with no problem. Tango shows, one to two days in advance, depending on the show.

By the time we decided to do a show on Saturday night, it was really too late to make reservations. But, we emailed Taconeando to ask about reservations at about 9pm, showed up at 10:pm-ish for the 10:30pm show at Taconeando for their Saturday night show, and was seated. We didn't think we could still do dinner there (dinner is served at 10pm)They found our email inquiry about the reservation, and gave us the 20% discount for internet reservations. It was an intimate setting and we enjoyed ourselves. There isn't a bad seat in the house. http://www.taconeando.com/ingles/home.html

It would probably be safer to make reservations, though.

On our way to Taconeando, our cab drove past several other tango shows on Balcarce St. La Revista looked to be the biggest production. We will check it out tonight and will let you know how it goes. Once again, we'll just show up and see if we get in =)

I was at Taconeando Friday night! There were not too many people there from the USA, just a couple of New Yorkers and our group from Texas. This was my 4th time. I like this show, although it is a challenge for non-Spanish speakers....and Friday night it was raining and we got zero help from the staff with trying to get a cab to go back home.

Thanks for the response; jainai, I will wait to hear on your tango session this evening! My husband loves tango, is Taconeando the place to go? Neither my husband and I speak Spanish. But to ask an ignorant question, why do you need to understand the language to see the dance?

SuY: We wondered the same thing. But we didn't understand that tango is not all about dancing. It's singing too. We went to one of the more traditional tango shows. Lots of tourists but locals too, and everyone else seemed to know all the words to all the songs and sang along. It would have helped to know Spanish, but it was great fun anyway.

I've read very nice things about the
Rojo Tango in the Faena Hotel. Has anyone been there?

Taconeando and most other tango shows have singing as well as an MC...Taconeando also has a comdedian who performs between tango dances...it is hard to follow unless you speak some Spanish,,,but since the evening is about tango dancing and the spirit of tango, not just the words, it hardly seems to matter much....

Taconeando is a small show...with just six dancers and a small band. It is a quality production, but not on a grand scale like some of the other shows (not as expensive either).

We made dinner reservations at Cabernet (very good to outstanding; large portions and pretty expensive), but nowhere else.
The tango show at Cafe Tortoni was quite good: $30.AR pesos pp without food/wine. We had no res, but I gave the honcho at $10 peso tip and we got a front row table with a middle-aged multilingual Brazilian man and his attractive daughter (we saw them the next day on the A line subte).
At the conclusion, they asked where everyone lived - a couple of Canadians; no Estadounidenses (except us, but we got applause when told them we lived in Mexico). All others were from South America.
The show is an order of magnitude better if you speak Spanish.
M

As for Taconeanod, it would have been a deeper experience if we were fluent in Spanish, because as drdawggy said, the emcee cracks jokes en espanol. But you can kinda guess what some of the jokes are (such as the advantages and disadvantages are of being 40 years old). In between some of the dances were wonderful ballads that they sang. It was just beautiful to watch and hear them sing so strong and effortlessly and enjoyably. It was also beautiful to look around the room and see older couples get teary eyed at some of the soulful songs. At the end of the night, the emcee asked where each table was from. The night we went, there were only 2 or 3 tables from the US. Others were from Buenos Aires (celebrating 30 and 40 year anniversaries!) Brazil, Mexico, etc. One table was from Japan. =) The dancers each invited someone from the audience to dance a tango with them on stage. And at the very end, they invited several people to come up on stage to dance to non-tango music (the DJ started off playing Celia Cruz's salsa song "La vida es un carnival." Although their website says the dancing begins after midnight, it seemed most cleared out after the first few dj'd non-tango songs. There definitely didn't seem to be any folks sticking around for tango.

If you want to tango, I have heard the milonga at the Armenian Cultural Center in Palermo Viejo is a good one.

It wasn't raining on the night we went (man, Friday night was a DOWNPOUR!), so after we left Taconeando, we walked around the neighborhood to see what else was going on (lots of people hanging out and eating/drinking at the sidewalk bars) before we waved a cab down (and there were lots) to take us home.

Well, as for Monday night, by the time we were ready to leave our loft for La Revista, it was too late. The show started at 10pm. Too bad, because we were looking forward to seeing another one. So, we ended up heading out for dinner Osaka. I'll probably write up our impressions of Osaka (short version = mixed).

Wanted to reply about dinner in BA in a couple of places in Palermo: Osaka (in Palermo Hollywood I think) and Sarkis (in Palermo Viejo).

So we went to Osaka on Monday night. Got there around 10:30pm. We didn't have reservations. The restaurant (at least on the main floor) seem about 75%-85% full. We asked the guy at the door (not sure if he was the seater or host or what, as he wore jeans and a button down shirt like we was himself was headed out for night at the bar with some friends) if there was a table for two in our poor Spanish. He rapid-fired back that our options were either the sushi bar or the bar as no tables were available. It took us a few more phrases before we understood what he was saying. So, we opted for the sushi bar. Then, he said they only accept cash, no credit card. Again, we struggled trying to understand what he was saying. But this didn't put us off. What put us off was that he finally switched to perfectly fluent English, repeated the fact about cash and just waived us over to the sushi bar.

We received much friendlier attitude from our server. We asked her in Spanish if they had a English version of the menu. In English, she replied "No" but that she'd give us a few minutes and we can ask as many questions as we wanted about the menu items. We sat back and looked forward to a great lighter meal and a change from all the meat and heavier food we'd been having all week. After scrapping plans for a tango show that night, we actually craved something simple like Vietnamese pho for dinner, but didn't hear of any pho noodle houses around, so went to Osaka. Just as an intro, Osaka serves Peruvian-Japanese food.

After ordering our beverages, an amuse bouche of diced fried potatoes with sliced red raw onions came. It was a pleasant surprise and a tasty combo, but might have been that much better if the diced fried potatoes were freshly fried (as opposed to being room temp) or even not fried and simply cooked another way and served at room temp.

For sashimi, their only raw fish options for the night was salmon, which was fresh, but also disappointing, because we couldn't order other things like spicy tuna rolls, hamachi, etc. We ordered a miso soup, a won ton soup (both were generous portions), a sushi roll that had cream cheese, tempura shrimp, and avocado, and an entree with shrimp and sweet white and green onions that came on a sizzling iron platter. We also ordered several cocktails and green tea. The soups were tasty. I expected some tofu or sliced green onions in my miso soup, but it was fine without. The wontons were filled with shrimp and the broth was tasty. The sushi roll was delicious. It came drizzled with a sauce. The roll did not come with picked ginger, wasabi, or soy sauce . But the usual wasabi-soy dip was really not necessary. The tempura looked more like a deep fried shrimp batter as opposed to the light tempura batter we're used to. But altogether, the roll was a hit. (I call it Belltown chi-chi faux-sushi - which you'd understand if you live in Seattle.)

The sizzling platter of shrimp was tasty, too. It was akin to Chinese sizzling platters. But the difference was the dish used what tasted like butter (instead of oil) and also an alcohol that reminded me of tequila. It was tasty and went well with the white rice that our server recommended we order.

Since we sat at the sushi bar, we oggled the dishes the sushi chefs were creating. However, by 11pm, the sushi chefs were packing their knives, and by the time we flagged our waiter down, it was too late to try their ceviche or other sashimi-styled dishes. That caught us by surprise and we had no warning for last call for sushi bar items. The kitchen was still open, but we didn't really want to order anything else from the kitchen. And, actually, we were satiated. We just wanted to taste some of the other items.

We were impressed, while sitting at the sushi bar, at the assembly of desserts. We ended up ordering a chocolate mousse over brownie (at our server's suggestion) over the green tea tiramisu or passion fruit mousse. While good, it was not out of this world.

I was surprised the green tea was as good as it was. My partner ordered three vodka tonics, with Absolut raspberry, and those were a hit. (We took a break from drinking wine that night.) =)

In sum, the meal was a nice change from the usual meat-heavy dishes we'd been having, the atmosphere was hip (dark and swanky), the doorman's attitude we could have done without, and the sashimi options were very limited. So, go here for a change and a fun twist to sushi, but I don't feel like I need to experience Osaka again. =)

On the other hand, in Palermo Viejo, I would definitely return to the Armenian restaurant Sarkis, which is a block or two past La Cabrera on Thames. We arrived around 11pm on a Sunday night and the place was only at about 30% capacity. The server "Chino" made it feel like you were a friend dropping by his home to have a meal and he knew just how much food you should order. He said we had to start the meal right and got us a trio of hummus, babaganoush, and a creamy white yogurt-like dip with a pile of pita bread. The beef kabobs (a la parilla) were not the best we've had, but the grilled keppe (keppe = ground beef served either raw or grilled) was incredibly delicious, the super moist chicken rice with raisins and toasted whole almonds was way too much for us to finish, and Chino made us stay to have my coffee grounds in my cup read by Roxanne while he gave my partner, who was obviously very tired by 1:15am, a limoncello to pass the time. Just about the only English words Chino knew was "Very Good" and they had an English version of their menu. But we had a great time at Sarkis, where it seemed like everyone knew Chino, and he knew everyone. Roxanne (part Spanish, part Armenian) was fluent in English and has two years of mandarin/Chinese, too.
Chino sent us home with the leftover chicken rice and a fresh portion of pita bread, which we had the next day for brunch =)