Gaucho Grill, 89 Sloane Avenue, London SW3 (020 7584 9901). Meal for two, including wine and service, £90
How can one restaurant do some things so well and others so badly? How can the branch of the Gaucho Grill on London's Sloane Avenue, which prepared for me a superlative steak, also serve up as a starter the exercise in gastronomic illiteracy that is the carpaccio ceviche? Let's take this dish apart. The carpaccio, invented at Harry's Bar in Venice, was designed for a countess on a diet of uncooked meat, and made a virtue of the very best beef fillet, served thinly sliced and raw. As anybody who has ever eaten a really good carpaccio will know, the flavour of quality raw beef, while divine, is also never more than subtle.
Ceviche is a method of 'cooking' animal proteins, usually fish, using the acid in the juices of citrus fruit, combined with various butch spices and seasonings. A good ceviche is a thing of beauty, ditto a good carpaccio. But a combination of the two? It's a nonsense. Sure, the beef may be best Argentinian fillet, but that doesn't make it a reasonable thing for an Argentinian restaurant like the Gaucho Grill to do. The ceviche part of the dish destroys any flavour in the carpaccio part. At which point I hear the spirited sound of raspberries being blown in my direction by one Douglas Rodriguez.
In New York, Rodriguez is a star. He is chef at the highly regarded Patria and founding father of the Nuevo Latino movement, an attempt to update the cooking of Latin America. He is the co-author of The Great Ceviche Book and, for the past few months, consultant chef at the Gaucho Grill. As he wrote the book, I suppose I ought to bend the knee, but after tasting that dish I can't quite bring myself to do so. I suspect I'd feel better about it if I wasn't also underwhelmed by our other starter, oysters BLT: oysters baked in a horseradish sauce with bacon and a tomato salsa. That's an awful lot of ingredients to foist upon a dear little oyster.
At least there were those steaks. An Argentinian restaurant that can't do a good steak is a like a trapeze artist who's afraid of heights. But in London, where a prime piece of grilled cow bum is an appallingly rare joy, we should big up the places that deliver. At the Gaucho Grill they come in a handful of cuts and sizes, topping out at 400g, and they really do use the best Argentinian beef. My sirloin, a very reasonable £17 for the top size, was a little under-trimmed but spoke of a life lived well on the Pampas. We liked the chips that went with it, the humitas - a sweet and nutty puree of maize - and the traditional chimichurri, a sauce of fresh green herbs, chilli, oil and vinegar. There's also a strong list of rich Argentinian wines, a good number of which can be bought in half-bottle carafes. Interestingly, the steaks are the one part of the menu Rodriguez hasn't touched.
The new menu is currently only available at a couple of branches, though it will later be rolled out to others. What, I wonder, are they trying to achieve? Argentinian food is the product of many interesting influences. It is resoundingly utilitarian, but this felt like an attempt to make it other. Granted, the surroundings are sophisticated: dark wood, cowhide-covered chairs and fancy cocktails. But that doesn't mean the menu should strain to meet it. The night I went, it felt like a song-and-dance man gagging to be cast as King Lear. It wants to be taken seriously, when, in truth, a superior steak is serious food enough.
Latino lives
Three places to revel in a taste of the Americas
Bocanova, 90 Colston Street, Bristol (0117 929 1538)
Brazilian-born chef proprietor Humberto Banks-Benevenuto favours a Mediterranean-style menu at this lively Bristol venue, but there are always a few dishes like moqueca (swordfish stew with coconut milk) and crabcakes made with palm oil and peppers. The superb steaks, imported from Brazil, might come with mixed leaves and tomato salsa or roasted vegetables, but 'never with chips'. On Wednesday nights, musicians play the bossa nova.
El Vergel, 8 Lant Street, London SE1 (020 7357 0057)
You'll have to squish in with barristers from the nearby court and local design folk to eat at one long table in this brilliant - and cheap - Latin American breakfast-and-lunch place convenient for Tate Modern. Chilean Kiko Sanhueza and his partner Stella make everything from scratch, including the 'village bread' and empanadas that can be filled with churrasco (thinned slices cut from a side of Argentinian beef), salsa and chilli. Lunch, including very good coffee, costs around a fiver.
Armadillo, 41 Broadway Market, London E8 (020 7249 3633)
Rogerio David's chic little Latino place may be out on a culinary limb in Hackney, but his New Wave pan-American cooking style draws in foodies from all over town. Roast suckling pig with onion escabeche, duck secco and fried cassava, Mayan chocolate ice cream and Mexican coffee typify the interesting combos. Argentinian steak may be enjoyed too - perhaps with the squash pancakes.
· Sue Webster
