Cabana Las Lilas (Argentina steak)

This is the fifth post in the Hello Argentina Series detailing my week-long trip in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Other posts include Hello Argentina, La Cabrera, La Rambla,Empanadas, Tamales, and Beer, Oh My!, and Buenos Aires Three Most Famous Ice Cream Shops.

"Who has the best steak in Buenos Aires?"

You can try your hardest to search as much as possible on this subject, and you'll soon realize that there's no real agreement.

Sure, there are the obvious famous ones, like La Cabrera, which not only can be found in every single guide book, it's also listed on prestigious lists such as the S. Pellegrino Latin American Top 50 Restaurants list.

But there are always naysayers to these popular destinations, saying that they are "over-hyped" and not as good as people think. It gets overwhelming and confusing pretty fast.

I knew I had limited time in Buenos Aires and, more importantly, a limited number of meals. Just like every food-obsessed tourist before me, I tried my best to choose my restaurants wisely.

Part of me knew I had to try La Cabrera, since most sources still cited it as one of the best. However, I was intrigued by the many people who would often point to other steak parillas (grill places) as being better than La Cabrera.

Were they right? Was I missing out?

And if I were to pick one, which one should I choose?

It was a hard and agonizing decision. I finally sought the advice of my food friend and food blogger, Cindy, from Chubby Chinese Girl. Cindy grew up in Argentina and was just back there a few years ago.

Cindy gave me tons of advice. She personally preferred Cabanas Las Lilas over La Cabrera, which she found underwhelming.

Cindy told me to make sure to get the sweetbreads, which were amazing.

At the end of the day, I decided I trusted Cindy a lot more than the mixed messages I was getting from all these food forums, so Bryan and I booked dinner at Cabanas Las Lilas our very first night in Buenos Aires.

Cabana Las Lilas is located in the modern Puerto Madero neighborhood, a beautiful riverside area that's lined with shops and restaurants. Some people say it's the safest neighborhood in Buenos Aires.

Though the neighborhood is a bit further from some of the sites, it's a beautiful place to walk around at night. It's also where our hotel was located, which made it an easy place to visit on our first night in a new foreign city.

If the weather's nice, diners can sit outside with lovely views of the river.

The minute you walk in Cabanas Las Lilas, you feel like you are in a restaurant that's serious about its steak.

We walked by multiple huge grills as well as saw all different cuts of meat laid out. It was pretty incredible.

It's a bit sneaky, but without asking, they bring you a plate full of antipasti soon after you sit down. It consists of tomato and mozzarella salad, prosciutto, grilled zucchini, and smoked salmon. It's nice to get food immediately if you're super hungry, though they do charge you for it.

In general, we found the starting antipasto to be ordinary and nothing special. Part of me wished I hadn't used up so much stomach space eating it, though it was nice to get some food right away.

Now the accompanying (unlimited) cheese bread, on the other hand, was a completely different story. This bread reminded me of the Brazilian cheese bread that I love so much. I popped these like candy, and happily accepted a second helping when they came around and asked.

In general the service was good, despite the fact that the restaurant is HUGE and there is a ton of activity going on. Each table got a fun pretzel shaped bread (I believe it was rosemary flavored?) which we split between us.

Totally due to Cindy's recommendation, we knew we had to order the sweetbreads. These were indeed fantastic. They were beautifully grilled and delectably juicy.

These sweetbreads do have a bit of that liver-like offal flavor, so if you're not a big fan of liver or similar types of offal, you may not love this.

Our server highly recommended this 2009 Black Tears malbec as one of his favorites, and it was good and pretty reasonably priced (around $50 USD?) though most wine in Argentina's restaurants will feel cheaper than wine in the US.

Sides are all ordered a la carte. Although simple grilled vegetables may not have been our first choice, our server highly recommended this side, so we got it. It was good - nicely grilled zucchini, tomatoes, potatoes, and mushrooms.

The server also recommended that we get the sauteed mushrooms in butter, which were pretty tasty. You can see him serving them to Bryan here straight out of the copper pot.

And then finally, finally, our steaks came. I decided to get hangar steak since it was a bit smaller and I'd heard that they are really flavorful. The steak was very good. I had to cut the steak sideways (not the way you would expect) in order to cut against the grain. Cutting this way made the steak much more tender.

Bryan got the ribeye (ojo de bife), his favorite cut of meat. He loved the smoky flavor that came from the high heat charcoal grill. The steak was also very flavorful and much less fatty than American beef. Most Argentinian beef is grass fed, and you can definitely tell.

Bryan realized after tasting this lean, grass-fed beef that he actually preferred fatty beef, like American style corn-fed beef or especially Japanese A5 Wagyu beef.

At the end of the meal, they brought over two pretty large bottles of complimentary after-dinner dessert drinks: limoncello and grappa.

Bryan much preferred the grappa and finished the entire bottle (!!).

For dessert, we ordered my favorite - flan. I'd had it at Spanish restaurants but this was my first time trying it in Argentina.

One major difference between Argentinian flan and Spanish flan is that Argentinians are obsessed with dulce de leche, a caramel made from milk and sugar cooked at low temperatures for hours. EVERYTHING seems to have dulce de leche as an accompaniment, including this flan.

The dulce de leche was delicious, so I was not complaining at all.

All in all, we had a really great meal at Cabana Las Lilas our first night in Buenos Aires. The ambiance is definitely more casual than that of La Cabrera (which felt more like a nice steakhouse), though we found the service to be fine. In general we thought the sides and other dishes were executed with more finesse and higher quality at at La Cabrera. However, we both preferred the steak at Cabanas Las Lilas. Consistent with what Cindy recommended, their sweetbreads are indeed fantastic.

All in all, it probably wasn't worth stressing so much over which restaurants to choose. We ended up enjoying every steak we had in Argentina. After all, steaks are inherently pretty tasty over there. Between Cabana Las Lilas and La Cabrera, you won't go wrong.

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