HIDDY

Far too busy working out in the field today......basking in the sun more like.

Three large ant nests had to be exterminated.

Gaucho100K

So Folks... last "official" day of this 2015 Cow Do. Look forward to meeting everybody at the Wine Tasting today.... ^

MsEverywhere

That ojo de bife we had last night was by far the best steak we've had so far this trip. Great choice, rbAA!

chrisphx

I will see everyone at 2pm today.

MSPeconomist

Not everyone. After yet another big dinner, I will be skipping lunch. Enjoy!

Gaucho100K

That was close..... massive traffic disruptions this morning for those of us coming in from the Northern suburbs of Buenos Aires. Luckily I was able to activate contingency plans and Im already here @Marieta.

Looking forward to meeting those attending the Wine Tasting.

Gaucho100K

The Wine Tasting group will be heading out to La Dorita a little earlier than planned, we should be there shortly before 200PM, depending on what traffic permits.

Gaucho100K

Arrived at La Dorita.....

MSPeconomist

Arrived at EZE a while ago, and happily camped out infhe Centurion lounge but thinking about moving either to the gate or to the AR inferior lounge next door.

Gaucho100K

With the Do having come to an official close with today's lunch @La Dorita, I just wanted to take the chance to say THANK YOU to everybody that came down this year !!!

Hope everybody had a good time and look forward to seeing everybody back here in 2016 !!!!!! ^

Cheers from EZE,
Alex / Gaucho100K

FlyingCow

Thanks to everyone - especially Alex - for another great Do! Hope those who left had safe flights back home and that everyone is recovering from the massive amounts of dead cow and Malbec

Already looking forward to Cow Do XII

Gaucho100K

Thanks Flor !!!!! ^

It was a pleasure having you and Flying Toro !!!

Hope to see you in 2016....

MsEverywhere

We had a great time! It was good to see my old friends and meet some new ones.

Alex, you asked us for feedback on the venues. If I had started at the beginning of the trip, I would have been more diligent.

Fri: Don Julio
It was handy having Flying Cow to help us negotiate accommodating us without a reservation. Alex, I recommend in the future you double check and triple check, or give one or more of us the phone #s, name, and count so we can check ourselves.

Our bife de chorizo steak was OK, but not nearly as good as Fervor Sunday night.

Sat: Marieta
The downstairs meeting room was perfect, and having lunch following the tasting was very convenient. I recommend that for future.

I'm sure most of their food was excellent, but after the snacks during wine tasting, we weren't very hungry.

Sun: Fervor
We had the ojo de bife, and it was outstanding! However, to be fair to Don Julio, I wonder if the comparison may have been affected by:

• Friday was different cut of steak, my favorite ojo de bife was at Fervor
• Fri night at Don Julio our group was larger so maybe steak cooled while assembling the rest of the order
• Fri Don Julio was extremely busy, so kitchen and wait staff were busier

Gaucho100K

Thanks for your feedback on the food & the venues.....

If other participants could also post their feedback that would be great !!!

MSPeconomist

Seeing a cable TV feature on eating in Argentina reminded me that I still hadn't posted my feedback here. I've been procrastinating in the hope of being able to say more by way of comparisons.

First of all, once again thanks very very very very very very much to Gaucho100K for everything. Thanks also to Flying Cow for help with translating, negotiating a lost reservation, navigating, and leading our Saturday night post-dinner stroll and pub crawl.

I was very happy with all of the meals I attended. I managed to get my cow nice and very rare at every meal this year, so I was happy. In fact, I'm hard pressed to make a definitive ranking between Don Julio and La Dorita; I think of them as being very similar. [I do suspect that I might have been given the wrong cut of beef at Don Julio but I'm not sure and it was very good.] However, would it make sense to use a different La Dorita location, such as the one in Recoleta even if it isn't the original one, in order to be closer to hotels for lunch on the day that some people are rushing off to the airport?

I liked doing the wine tastings (or maybe at least one of them, as it could have been fun to go to a different location for those of us who participated in both) at Marieta. It's a great space and they supplied good snacks to go with the wine. Lunch was good, but I might have appreciated the Marieta lunch on a different day from our dinner at Pura Tierra as the food is similar in style. This isn't surprising since there's a connection between the two restaurants, IIRC with Marieta being run by the former chef at Pura Tierra. I like Pura Tierra because it's a good opportunity to experience local upscale creative cuisine and it's a break from lots of dead cow at almost every meal, although by our relatively early dinner there this year I felt I had already overeaten to the max with a Park Hyatt breakfast followed by snacks during the tasting and then lunch at Marieta. [The Grill at Puerto Madera is similar to Pura Tierra in some ways, but to me seems to focus more on upscale dead cow and has a pretty location but a less interesting interior.]

In fact, I guess I'm converging on making one concrete suggestion to have the Marieta lunch on Monday rather than Saturday, keeping the Pura Tierra dinner on Saturday. This would also mean a slightly lighter/faster/earlier lunch for those flying out Monday night, which would also be a good thing IMO. Saturday could then be a casual dead cow lunch, or perhaps Fervor for those who might want fish.

I'm glad we went to Fervor Sunday night (which is a good thing since I am to blame for suggesting the place) but in retrospect it might have been better if our group had been split into two tables, partly to make conversation easier. Deciding and ordering seemed chaotic, yet only a few people had input into the communal items like appetizers, vegetables, and wine. (IMO too much food was ordered and the meal seemed expensive compared to Don Julio/La Dorita, but I guess it's in a more expensive neighborhood and we did seem to have a lot more food.) However, I do need to give the restaurant lots of credit for putting up with our group. OTOH, Sunday might not be the best day to go here as they had very few fish and seafood choices available. [Do fish markets and fishing boats not work on Sunday in Argentina?]

Some people were talking about going to El Establo. I don't know whether that happened, but I had an excellent Sunday night dinner there last year. It seems to be on the corner of two small streets in the old downtown area and I liked the style of it looking like a stable with some obviously long-standing regular local customers. It was easy even though we didn't speak Spanish.

BTW, the Travel Network cable television show on eating in Buenos Aires was hosted by my almost neighbor (I sometimes see him in my grocery store) adventurous foodie Andrew Zimmern. It started off at Don Julio, although on TV the tables looked much farther apart. Then he talked about weekends on ranches outside of town and their barbecues. Back in the city, he visited a real hole in the wall called something like La Estancia in Palermo. The half hour finished at a pastry cafe called Juan Pablo located in (Palermo) Soho.