October 2018.

Recommended by our winery guide, this lovely little place unassumingly presents a perfect light lunch in the downtown Mendoza barrio of Santa Maria. It’s outdoor scene is set on a wide sidewalk under South American springtime oak-like trees with tidy black-checked tablecloths and red-cushioned seats. It’s located on a busy street between a pretentious hotel and a bakery that looks better than average by Argentina standards (which isn’t saying much). Passers-by are urbane Argentinians and tourists.

The menu features vegetable dishes but wouldn’t be Argentinian if there weren’t steak and other meats, including’s succulent-sounding sandwiches. We shared the burrata and prosciutto salad with pear. This was a moderate-quantity salad with a parsley-sprinkled burrata and nice prosciutto, and an over-poached but tasty pear with lettuce and tiny-tomato sliced. The dressing was wonderfully demure, apparently just good vinegar with not much oil, a wee bit of salt and pepper, and no mustard. Simple and delicious, but we were hungry.

This lunch was meant to tide us over to a big dinner the reservation for which we couldn’t make until 10 PM by which time we would both typically be fast asleep, so we wanted to keep things at a caloric dull roar: the second course was shared roast salmon. Will have to do some research to see what they serve here but I guess from its oiliness and colour it’s a farmed Atlantic salmon. It is beautifully cooked, rare in the centre, skin fully edible, tomatoes, lettuce, and a balanced tartar sauce chiming in.

We drank a Mendoza viognier, 600 pesos (about C$20) which was fragrant and balanced.

Great light lunch for about C$50. Food 8.8, ambience 9.1, service 9.2, value 9.6, peace and quiet 8.5 (just the natural noises of the busy street).