On our first evening we arrived into town later than expected, so grocery stores were already closed. We weren’t terribly hungry but needed to eat a little something, so we decided to go simple and split a “typical” pizza from RÚSTICA Pizza & Cafe paired with a strong red ale and irish stout from Ohne Grenzen. The place was empty when we arrived, so we had the upstairs area all to ourselves. Pizza was solid, overall a good choice for us after a long travel day.
Our main hiking plans for the next morning were foiled so after a few other stops we took a couple of hours to explore town on foot, visiting grocery stores, chocolate shops, and taking photos of menus to decide where we wanted to eat.
La Esquina had some great reviews and was very busy at lunchtime, so we decided to try there for dinner. We managed to get a table around 8:15pm and settled in with a nice bottle of Pinot Noir. (Most people around us were drinking water or giant bottles of Coke.) Eric ordered the chicken milanesa and I got the ribeye (ordered juicy but it came out more medium). Both plates were overflowing with french fries. We felt this was an affordable place to experience parrilla but I would have liked my steak less done. Service was friendly though and we left full (with a container filled with our leftover fries).
On our exploring walk, we noticed that Blest Brewery had an outpost just south of town in a cute little area called El Mercado, so we rinsed off the dust from the day and walked into town for beers. There was no pricing anywhere on signs or menus but when I went to pay, it was only $6k for two beers! Must have been happy hour. I got the stout and surprised Eric with a cider.
For dinner we went to the neighboring La Fonda for dinner where I snuck off to take a few photos of the gorgeous sunset before our food arrived.
With no white wines on the menu, Eric again graciously offered to split a bottle of red with me. This time we tried a new varietal to us, Bonarda. Eric had the beef milanesa with Roquefort (very light flavor but good texture) and I got the burger with ham and cheese which was delicious. We were very unimpressed with the fries though, under seasoned and limp. We didn’t finish the wine bottle but we were able to take it home no problem. Also had a visit from the resident pup that took a liking to Eric.
