When I was taking in high school French, one of our assignments was to write a menu of twenty items for an imaginary restaurant.
Between my culinary tunnel-vision and my C- mastery of the language, this was an incredible challenge. Although my trusty Collins dictionary could provide me translations of 'beef', 'ham' and 'cheese', I couldn't, for the life of me, stretch my imagination to twenty items. Combinations helped (if I remember correctly 'ham and cheese' was a starter, while 'beef and ham' was a main), but the F was inevitable.
Little did I know, this restaurant actually exists. My adolescent carnivorous dream-land is alive and well. If only I had taken Spanish...
padThe South Kensington location of El Gaucho is in a dark basement, furnished with slightly-wobbly, hand-crafted wooden tables, packed with displaced Argentinians looking for a football-sized taste of home. The walls are draped with traditional ethno-geographic kitsch (from Maradona to cowboy prints) and the service is warm and enthusiastic (even during the chaos of a Friday night).
The waitress stacked our table with vegetarian edibles as soon as we sat down - fresh buttered rolls, bruschetta, marinated Lima beans and a pot of olives. This, as we soon learned, is nothing but culinary sleight of hand - El Gaucho does nice nibbles, but IT'S ALL ABOUT THE STEAK.
The menu, paraphrased, reads much like this: Steak, Big Steak, Bigger Steak, Steak with Cheese, Steak with Bacon, Big Steak with Cheese and Bacon and, for a lighter meal, Lamb Steak.
Naturally, none of these were quite steaky enough, so we went for the specials. I dug into the 'El Gaucho' - a thick sirloin topped with two soft fried eggs, sauteed red peppers and a mountain of grilled onions. The whole thing was then surrounded by a rasher of butter-soaked bacon. It took a few minutes to get the hang of the dish, but after the original (slightly awestruck) awkwardness, 'El Gaucho' and I got along very well indeed. Trying to get egg, bacon, steak, grilled onions and mashed potato (everyone needs a side dish...) on a fork is a dicey proposition, but well worth the effort.
As excessive as my dish was, it still paled in comparison with Anne's 'Relleno'. For all practical purposes, it was a ham-and-cheese toastie. Except the two slices of bread were replaced with a pair of 8oz sirloins.
It worked something like this (from top to bottom):
Cheese
Steak
Cheese
Ham
Enormous Chili
Steak
Cheese (a fine layer - to round the whole thing out)
The whole thing stood at least eight inches off the plate (even discounting the fries).
The wine we chose to round out the meal was the Trapiche Cabernet Sauvignon. We initially chose it because the menu's description included the adjective 'leathery', which seemed incredibly appropriate. The wine was a pleasant and palatable surprise. Anne's palate (much better than mine) reports that it had a sweet and full taste and a slow and lingering afterglow. It complemented the meal beautifully.
I envision a kitchen filled with endless racks of steak. Nearby, rest enormous barrels of bacon (US), cheese, ham and onions. As each order comes through, one singing cook (in my imagination, it's required that they all have deep and manly baritones) throws huge slabs of beef around merrily while others daintily scatter double-handfuls of bacon atop each order.
I'm only sorry that I didn't know of its existence in high school, else I could have at least bargained for a D.
El Gaucho
30B Old Brompton Road
SW7 3DL
0207 584 8999
www.elgaucho.co.uk
The Bite: A magical fairyland of meat.
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