CONSTANCIA: HIDING UNDER A BUSHEL

Along with the recent proliferation of Steakhouses in London there is small but noticeable boom in the number of the Argentinian equivalent, Parillas. You have eleven (count em’) Gauchos in London alone. Eleven too many in my opinion. There are a number of smaller places like old DH favourite Santa Maria del Buen Ayre and relative newcomer North London Garufa which left us disppaointed by its ‘politeness’

The new kid on the block is Constancia, which by virtue of being South of the river and hence completely off our radar has been quietly getting on with it business in a rather non-descript part of Tower Bridge Road for the past two months. If you weren’t looking for it you’d easily miss it. No so the locals who were piling in on a sultry mid-week evening.

Started by two brothers, Constanscia, despite having one or two trappings of a chain - branded t-shirts for the staff – is in fact an independent operation that, importantly, smells and delivers like a bon-fide meat, er, joint. It has a relaxed feel but the food is the real deal: unapologetic and full-on.

Old BA hand HS nodded his approval at our starter of Beef Empanadas. Beautifully crisp, hot pastry encased minced Beef mixed with chopped Egg and Olives. There was probably some Paprika or similar going on in the mix giving a little heat. Not cheap at £2.80 a piece but well worth it.

A meal in a Parilla like one in say, an Asador follows a similar pattern: a few bits to nibble on and to distract you while the main event is prepared. Despite HS having consumed the best part of a K of Cowboy Ribeye for lunch at Goodman’s he gamely plumped for the biggest dish on the menu, the mighty Parillada Constancia.

Having a Steak cooked rare on a grill usually means that it doesn’t develop much of a crust, as was the case here. At Garufa this was a bit of a problem as it was served on a hot plate powered by tea lights. At Constancia they had a small brazier with ash-white coals. It was so hot I had to have a beer. By flipping the Steaks a couple of times and moving them around the required char was achieved.

As with most Argentinian places the Beef is imported and vac-packed. Traditionally the meat isn’t aged that much. I suppose this is because so much is eaten and the taste over there is for fresher tasting beef. I liked my aged JOS Steaks as much as the next person but I do like this younger stuff - there’s still the beefiness of a good steak. The complexity isn’t there but sometimes that’s an advantage: I’m don’t want to drink ’82 Clarets every day of the week. Once or twice a week is enough.

Morcilla was from Southern Spain. It didn’t have the rice of the stuff from Burgos, it wasn’t as runny as the Leon variety, nor did it have the spices of the pudding from Ronda. It was bloody good though (see what I did there). Even better were the homemade sausages which were dense and well-filled with a coarse pork mixture.

Serving the Provolone cheese in a separate dish was a good idea as usually it goes all over the grill and is a bugger to divvy up. Chips with Garlic and Parsley were great.

Given how echt the whole meal was HS wondered why there wasn’t intestine on the menu. When asked, one of the brothers shrugged his shoulders, “it’s difficult”. Which probably means some numpty in the Food Standards Agency thinks someone may strangle themselves on entrails. Bring it on, say I.

Probably unnecessary, but you know we’re going always going to order it anyway, two bowls of homemade Helados were good although I think my Vanilla and Dulce de Leche edged it.

With a Coffee and Grappa (both necessary to keep body and soul together) the final bill of £115 including service seemed pretty high. However, unless you went mad on the wine this is probably as much as you’re going to spend here and it is possible to get away for a less.

Given the great food, service and atmosphere and the fact there are places which charge a lot more for a lot less I think they’re onto a winner here with Constancia. File under top Argentinian in Bermondsey. Oh and good work, HS.

BUENOS AIRES: LA BRIGADA & A LATE NIGHT

It may sound corny, but, as I am discovering, Buenos Aries only really comes alive at night.

It’s streets never look better than they do in the declining light of the early evening and its people seem to rise from a somnambulant state at about 6pm to begin to think about supper, drinks and a bit of a party.

I was lucky that my new best chums The Gils invited me to join them for an evening’s entertainment.

First though, I had the day to kill and spent much of it walking along the relatively recently developed Puerto Madero with its spiffy gleaming new buildings and lines of lavish looking restaurants aimed at those with large expense accounts and little brain.

It is all perfectly fine in the way that any sterile converted waterfront area can be, but it held little appeal certainly in the dining area. So, I surreptitiously followed a gang of construction workers on a break and ended up along side a reservoir where any number of small stalls were set up offering grilled meats and sandwiches.

For about £1, I was able to treat myself to a Bandiola, a sandwich made with big strips of Bife de Chorizo, enough to send me back to the apartment I am renting and to bed for a bit of a nap.

By 8pm, I was up and ready to face the world and hopped in a cab back to the St Telmo district to meet my new friends at what is considered BA’s finest purveyor of meats of the grilled kind, La Brigada.

I was in expert hands as Martin Gil was one of the founders of the Argentinia Slow Food movement and knows his Argentinian grills inside out. He took charge and I was soon faced with a hot chunk of provoleta which, he assured me, was the benchmark for any parrilla.

Next, some innards. I love innards and there are not many varieties that I have not eaten in my forty three years. However, this was a first, delicate mollejas (sweetbreads) followed by chinchulines (intestines or chitterlings) both of which I had indulged myself in many times, but these were different having being separated from something which previously bleated rather than went ‘moo” Martin is pleasingly specific and instructed me to "only add five drops of lemon to wake it up" who was I to argue? Slightly charred on the outside and melted to a liquid inside, they were as good bits of offal as I can recall eating in a long, long time.

The main event was a large chunk of Bife De Chorizo and a slab off the short end of a rib. Both excellent and cooked, as they tend to here, to medium rare which worked well with an excellent wine from Mendoza whose name I could not drag from the fuzziness of my brain if you pointed a gun at me. It began with a “Q” if that helps at all.

As Martin put it “you either liked grilled meats or you don’t, but you are not going to find any better than this in the whole of Argentina” ‘nuff said.

In yet another one of those astonishing displays of hospitality I am encountering just about everywhere, the Gils insisted on picking up the tab and then invited me to join them at a friends birthday party.

So, after at least letting me buy them a drink in the old world elegance of the bar at The Plaza Hotel, they whisked me to another part of town where a party was just getting going (it was only midnight after all) more food, plenty of wine and a rather fun performance from a local entertainer whose songs I did not quite follow but guess they involved wanting to kill herself because a man broke “mi corazon”

One more night in this fun town, if I can last the pace. Then I am off to sit on a beach in Brazil for a bit of a rest

BUENOS AIRES: GORGEOUS GIRLS & GRILLS

I have had a hard time walking around Buenos Aries since I arrived about 48 hours ago.

It is not the hateful weather, which despite the fact it is almost Summer, is cold and horribly damp.

It is not the fact that it is a vast city accommodating a huge volume of traffic with drivers who obviously score extra points if they hit a balding, forty something tourist with ears like open car doors.

Nope, I am not going to lie to you, it is because the women in this city are so astonishingly attractive that I have been wandering around in a state of step troubling engorgement almost since I touched down at the airport.

The women here are, as we used to say in Rotherham “drop your chips” gorgeous. However, being firmly in the “it has ears so it must be a face” category, I am, of course, entirely invisible to every last one of them. Bugger.

Anyway, despite this handicap, I have managed to hobble around and squeeze in a few meals which, unsurprisingly, given where I am, have involved large chunks of fresh meat grilled for my pleasure.

I have tried a few Parrillada so far and yesterday’s effort at La Dorita in Palermo was not a bad effort. Starting with a few hefty croquetta before moving on to a 400gms bife de lomo (tenderloin) with a bowl of sweet potato chips. Followed (in tribute to HP who would have loved this meal) a Mixta of helado. They don’t age their meat here, so the taste is quite different from those I tried recently in the USA. They also like to cook it a little more than the bloody state I normally demand, but it is plenty enjoyable never the less.

Wine comes, in rather fun little penguin shaped pots which the locals “baptise” with a little soda and chunk or two of ice, and the whole experience is, to go back to another “chips” reference, “cheap as”

In fact, my meal yesterday (three courses, wine, tea and a little something extra at the end) came to just under £14 and, I am told that it is one of the more expensive versions in town with similar meals being easily available for well under £5.

I have another forty eight hours in BA before flying off to Brazil. I am going to see how much more meat I can fit in.

This city may not be kind to the ego of a middle aged man, but it is, at least kind on the wallet.