First off, this is one of a spate of new places that have eschewed the restaurant reservation model - places like Gran Dabbang and Proper. It's first come, first served, and people start lining up well before opening hour. With an opening time of 8pm, in Buenos Aires, one doesn't tend to think of a place as being crowded, as most folk don't eat until later. But, I arrived at about 7:45 and there were a dozen people in front of me, and by the time the doors opened at 8, the line stretched down the block. By 8:15 there wasn't a seat in the house available. And even by the time I left, nearly two hours later, there was still a line.
I'd grabbed the first seat at the sushi bar, and a young woman sat down next to me a moment or so later, and suddenly burst out with "Dan!". Turned out to be someone who'd had dinner at Casa SaltShaker a couple of weeks earlier. We chatted a few minutes and decided to split dinner and get a chance to try more things.
Excellent gyoza, packed with flavor - lots of ginger and garlic - and perfectly cooked in a little cast iron skillet and then flipped out. 170 pesos.
I knew I was going to be happy on the sushi end when seeing that they a) don't use cream cheese on any of their sushi, and b) they have a selection of fish, and you can actually order a nigiri moriawase - a plate of 12 different types of fish. (there's a small 5 piece version too) We did kind of hope they'd let us cut each piece in half so we could each sample, but they refused, wouldn't give us a knife, so we had to pick and choose. I do want to go back and order it again, because honestly, it's exquisite sushi. Perfectly formed and delicious. Slightly small - the strips of fish are sort of the width of my little finger, but damn it's good. If Mirutaki offered sushi by choice, rather than just a small and large combo platter, it would rocket to the top of my list. 400 pesos.
We were less enamored of the ramen. We ordered the spicy shrimp karai ramen and the tonkatsu pork ramen. Both had very light broths - I mean, I understand delicacy, but these bordered on no flavor - even the spicy one. The noodles were strange - very, very long - like two-foot long noodles, and they're freshly made, and stored in little rolled up coils in the refrigerator, and they sort of still sat like that, clumped together coils, in the bottom of each bowl. They were delicious, but hard to eat (the shrimp ramen comes with squid ink noodles, just as a note).
Add a handful of sprouts, a properly cooked egg, some seaweed. The shrimp one had a couple of strips of bamboo, some corn, and two prawns, but no more; while the pork one had two pieces of sliced pork that didn't have that lovely roasty char siu kind of character to them. All in all, rather disappointing, and even with trading off on the two bowls, we barely finished half of either of them. 270 and 230 pesos, respectively.
We were, then, still hungry, and given how good the gyoza and sushi had been, decided to go with one of the other appetizers - takoyaki - deep fried octopus fritters with wavering flakes of bonito atop. Yum. We were back on track. 180 pesos.
We were actually just considering ordering another round of the nigiri moriawase and flipping who got to eat which piece, when chef Matías, who we'd gotten to talking to while he whipped up sushi for the room, placed this in front of us - delicate slices of octopus with salmon (maybe trout, actually) roe, radishes and pickles. Delicious, though it did derail our decision to order more sushi. There's always next time.
Add in a water, beer, and a small cubierto (25 pesos/person), and tip, and we came in around 1700 pesos, or about $62. I'd go back for any of the appetizers, the sushi, and maybe try something else off the menu. I just wish I liked the ramen more than we did. read more