Taking over the space vacated, thankfully, by the awful La Bandurria, this place has only been open a few weeks. It actually came to my attention when I was searching for somewhere doing something creative with merluza negra, or Chilean sea bass as we tend to call it (it's traditional name in English is the Patagonian toothfish, but that's lousy for marketing purposes). So I popped over to check out that dish, and some of their fusion style sushi. Now, the name, off the bat, seemed something very Japanese, and I thought I'd check it out. Imagine my surprise to find out that Taki Ongoy is the name of a 1986 song... well hour and a quarter "conceptual art piece" by Argentine singer Victor Heredia, commemorating a millenarian, political, religious group of the 16th century that fought against the contamination of indigenous culture with Spanish culture and values. Seems an odd choice for the name of a restaurant serving up food that's antithetical to that ideal, a mashup of Peruvian indigenous, Spanish, and Japanese cultures... no?
It's a pretty space, they've certainly done a complete makeover from the previous spot. I can't say I was enamored of the service. It was a weird mix of standoffish reserve and an obsequious tendency to over explain everything. Plus, my waitress was in the midst of las gripe, the flu, and I really kind of didn't want her to keep returning to the table. That, and despite coming back to my table twice to ask me to repeat my order a second and third time, "because I'm just not functioning well tonight", she managed to get it wrong.
A little gift of the house to start, a potato and cured trout fritter. Nice start, tasty and something different.
There's a classic plate in sushi bars called a moriawase - it's sort of like a mini-omakase, or chef's choice. Usually, it's somewhere between 6-12 pieces of sushi or sashimi, each different (the word literally translates as assorted). Like an omakase it's a moment for the sushi chef to show their stuff. Here, clearly not quite doing their research, it's called a morisawe, which as best I can tell doesn't mean anything. And, it arrives as two pairs, one that you choose and one that the chef chooses. I asked for the chef to choose both, but both from their nigiri list. Instead I got two pieces of plain salmon sashimi, and two of their batayaki, a ginger butter poached salmon with parmesan foam on top. Yes, parmesan. The plain sashimi seems a bit of a cheat in the creativity department for the 470 peso tab. Prettily presented and very high quality though.
Far better, a half roll of their mallku kunturi (another song, this one from Inkari, and the name referring to the god of the mountains in the Aymara language). The roll is a mix of king crab and avocado, wrapped in rice and seaweed, then quickly fried to give it a crunchy exterior, and topped with a "mild huancainia" sauce... which didn't taste anything like huancaina sauce (yellow chilies, walnuts, cheese), but sort of like... well, a dollop of Cheez Whiz. The roll without the sauce, however, was excellent. At 510 pesos for a half roll, that's steep.
Prawn gyoza were delicious, with a slightly creamy Peruvian chili sauce below. Only negative, they were over-steamed, and a couple of them were falling apart, making them a little hard to eat. And not remotely worth the 680 pesos charged - that's $2.66 per dumpling, making them the most expensive dumplings I've had in Buenos Aires.
And, the plate that brought me to Taki Ongoy, the merluza negra. Coming from their robata grill menu (their claim is they have the only robata grill in the city - I'm pretty sure Osaka Puerto Madero has had one since they opened, but I won't swear to that). The only thing right about this dish was the cooking of the fish, which was pretty much perfect - delicate and soft and just flaking away, after being grilled in a bamboo leaf. From there, however, we plunge to the depths of despair. The sauce drowning the fish was so sweet it would have better been served over ice cream or cake. And in complete contrast, the heavy, gluggy, "risotto" of red quinua below it was near inedible - the quinua undercooked, and laden with roasted portobellos and salty cheese - nothing about the combination worked. Certainly not the 830 peso price for it.
All told, with beverages added in, and a tip, the meal rounded out to roughly 3400 pesos, or $80 (hey, that's what I charge), and none of it that justified that price level, which is on par with somewhere like Osaka, but not remotely the quality. They did give me a discount card for 20% off on my next meal there, though even with that, I'm not sure I'd go back. Maybe to try some other sushi selections... maybe not. I mean, La Mar is less than a block away, serving far better Nikkei food for less. read more