Mishiguene Restaurate, Buenos Aires, Argentina

This was our first dinner in Argentina and it was a very good start to an excellent food trip. We arrived at opening time--8:30 at night--and were the only ones in the place. I do struggle with that in general, and combat it by having a late lunch instead of dinner, and that has been a good strategy as I age, having the heaviest, and sometimes the only, meal of the day a bit earlier, so that by the time I am settling down to sleep the meal is well on it's way in the digestive cycle. The thing about cultures that start dinner so late is that no one is going to bed before midnight and often not until the wee hours of the morning, and that is just not how we roll. Unless there is a 6 hour time difference and then it it perfect. We can essentially stay on our time, less jet lag in both directions. Argentina is both an overnight flight to get there and a minimal time difference, so let's just say I was not at my best. The food is both Ashkenazy and Sephardic cuisine that revives the flavours of traditional Jewish food from a contemporary perspective. These revive Jerusalem-trained chef Tomás Kalika’s childhood recollections and his quest for food that imprints an immigrant population on the history of a place--these are his words and high goals. One of Mishiguene’s signature dishes is Pastrón, a beef prime rib cured for ten days with salt, herbs and spices, which is then smoked over wood embers for four hours, and steam-cooked for a further fourteen--it was the only dish that did not wow us--everything else was great.