The World in 202 Meals

As gluttonous food bloggers, we’ve experienced some pretty excessive meals. While it’s not unusual for us to leave restaurants in danger of bursting, there have been a few particularly extreme cases—stumbling home after multi-course feasts at Lemonia and the Old Justice, for example, I’ve sworn never to eat again.

In Broadway Market’s Buen Ayre, though, we have a new champion. We left the restaurant not only with sickeningly full stomachs, but with doggy bags full of two pounds of leftover steak—these salvaged from an even bigger pile of unconsumed meat. (Matthew got four days of steak sandwiches out of his doggy bag share.)

Why so much meat? Buen Ayre specialises in the Argentine art of the parillada, a mixed grill cooked on a parilla, an Argentine grill that’s hung above flaming charcoal with chains. Starting at £16.50 per person for a minimum of two diners, Buen Ayre’s parilladas are a vegetarian’s nightmare—sizzling heaps of Argentine sausage, black pudding, sweetbread, kidney and all manners of grilled steak. (The Parillada Mixta does however come with yummy grilled provolone and deliciously nutty pesto-stuffed mushrooms in place of short ribs.)

Irish-Argentine chef John Patrick Rattagan grew up barbecuing meat outside Buenos Aires, and the charred, juicy results really are Buen Ayre’s reason for existing. The lengthy menu extends to starters (we ordered empanadas and ox tongue) mains and sandwiches, but there’s hardly a vegetarian option to be found; the restaurant’s simple setting, a small, slightly cramped dining room with wooden floors, tables and chairs, means the meaty dishes are the main attraction.

We ordered two parilladas, the Mixta and the Al Paso, a lot of meat for even the most serious carnivore, but, as the last table of the night, when it came to portion size we did even better: the kitchen piled their leftover glut of sirloin steaks on top of our expected lump of flank steak, sausage, black pudding, short ribs, provolone and mushroom. On the side was the famous oil-chili-garlic-oregano sauce, chimichurri, and two bowls of fluffy, crispy chips (one bowl drenched in garlic and parsley), and our glasses were full of Argentine red from the lengthy wine list.

The challenge of chewing through such a mountain of flesh was made easier by fact that it was all pretty tasty. The rich blood sausages were swallowed effortlessly, and the steaks, though slightly tough, were nevertheless rare and well-seasoned, just the way we like them. (The lengua a la vinegreta, our marinated ox tongue starter, remained the highlight of the night, however—the vinegary, tender slices converted even those of us disgusted by ox tongue as children.) Come midnight and closing time, we were still happily (though sluggishly) chewing. We’ll be back—definitely without any vegetarians in tow.

In summary

Buen Ayre
50 Broadway Market, Hackney, E8 4QJ
020 7275 9900
6pm to 10:30pm Monday to Friday; noon to 5pm and 6pm to 10:30pm Saturday and Sunday.