Showing posts with label Agentinian. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Agentinian. Show all posts

Monday, September 12, 2016

Cobaya Fuego with Francis Mallmann


Our last Cobaya dinner, back in July, was with Paul Qui at his restaurant Pao in the Faena Hotel on Miami Beach. We had an unexpected visitor during that dinner: Francis Mallmann, the most celebrated chef in Argentina, and also Pao's neighbor at the Faena, where his restaurant Los Fuegos also resides. We spent some time explaining what we do, and I saw a twinkle in his eye. A couple months later, and we were back at the Faena, this time for a dinner with Chef Mallmann and his crew on the veranda behind the hotel.



Mallmann is a master of live fire cooking, but I suspect that the hotel folks were a bit reluctant to have one of his more elaborate pyres assembled on the grounds of their billion dollar project. These fires were somewhat more modest, but were used to good effect.

(See all the pictures in this Cobaya Fuego with Francis Mallman flickr set).


With Damien Hirst's gold-plated mammoth as a backdrop, our guinea pigs assembled on the veranda, and servers circulated with a couple snacks before we were seated.



I remain forever loyal to any sweetbread preparation Michelle Bernstein does, but Mallmann's mollejas will run a close second. Sliced fairly thin and aggressively seared on the grill until the edges were charred to almost black, these sweetbreads were served over toasted bread daubed with a creamy pepper purée and topped with a sliver of pickled onion.

A crudo of fresh scallop matched the shellfish's sweetness with an assertive dose of salt and citrus, tucked into crisp, refreshingly bitter endive leaves.

We then settled our fifty guinea pigs into seats at one long communal table for fifty stretching along the covered patio which runs between the restaurant and the hotel pool – surely the biggest group we've ever been able to assemble at one table.

(continued ...)

Monday, May 23, 2016

best thing i ate last week: parrillada at Los Fuegos


Months ago, I made my first visit to the new Faena Hotel, to try out Chef Paul Qui's restaurant, Pao (some first thoughts on Pao here). I was equally intrigued by its sibling at the Faena, Francis Mallmann's Los Fuegos, but hadn't made my way back. Mallmann, if you're unfamiliar, is a larger-than-life character who runs several restaurants in Argentina, and literally wrote the book which has inspired a new wave of interest in open-fire cooking. (For a good introduction, this episode of Chef's Table featuring him is highly recommended).

I pass up 99% of the freebie meal offers I get via FFT, but an invite to a Sunday asado at Los Fuegos was too good to pass up. So full disclosure and all, but hopefully I've built up enough credibility that you'll believe me when I tell you this was great stuff. Our afternoon junket took us through most of the Sunday menu, which is typically a $75 affair with several choices among three-plus courses. On special occasions (Father's Day is coming up ...) it will likely be more expansive, more expensive, and more family style, like what we were served.

There were lots of highlights – the wood oven baked empanadas, the grilled sweetbreads given a black-edged hard sear and a squeeze of burnt lemon, the bubbling provoleta with crusty bread – but the centerpiece was the parrillada, and the real standouts for me, the crisp-edged, tender-fleshed lechoncito, and the oozy, rich morcilla sausage.

(You can see all my pictures in this Los Fuegos by Francis Mallmann flickr set.)

I'll be back on my own dime soon.

Runner-up: the ultra-crispy Korean fried chicken, served in a puddle of kimchi-spiced yogurt, at Talde Miami Beach.