Upfront, it was really good, and I've been back a second time solo. It's a little corner…read more(Humahuaca) sort of café and pasta place. They also offer up salads and a few main courses, but pasta is clearly their mainstay. On weekdays, they offer a true bargain - a plate of pasta of your choice (a dozen varieties), with sauce of your choice (another dozen), with soft drink or a glass of wine, plus a coffee or an ice cream for dessert, for a mere 250 pesos. A couple of the more elaborate sauces carry a premium of 50 extra pesos. On weekends, the pastas with sauces run between 200-250 pesos by themselves, which is still a bargain. So, over two visits, three plates of pasta and one dessert....
Handrolled fusilli with carbonara sauce. Regular readers experienced the agonies of last year's search for a decent carbonara sauce in this city - here and here. So these folks get some things right and some things not quite there. No cream, that's a huge plus. Beautiful, crispy lardons of panceta. Another plus. They toss the pasta with the lardons and egg yolks (that seem to have maybe been whisked with a little of the pasta water) to coat, off the heat. But they don't emulsify in the cheese, nor add any other seasoning. Maybe that's a paean to local tastes - but they serve the salt, pepper, and cheese on the side, to be added by us. It's good, once seasoned and "cheesed", and the fusilli themselves are excellent, but I'd rather not have to do the work myself. (210 pesos)
I'm not sure we got exactly what we ordered. First off, we were both excited by their offering of raviolis de sesos, i.e., brain ravioli. It's a delicacy that few places offer - it's the first time I've seen them here in BA in a very long time, and used to be one of my favorites at Babbo in New York. We decided on pesto for the sauce. The ravioli, beautiful, delicate, well seasoned. The sauce... that's not pesto. I don't know if the waitress or kitchen made an error, or if their pesto is just... not pesto. This seemed to be a spinach puree - there was no hint of basil, nuts, cheese, and only a mere one of garlic. And if memory serves, a spinach sauce was an option. It was excellent with the ravioli, and in hindsight, pesto might have overpowered the delicacy of the filling, but still, not pesto. (225 pesos)
On the solo visit, it was a weekday, and I went for a "premium" sauce, which was really just the basic tomato sauce with the addition of a trio of meatballs. All over spinach fettucine. Again, the pasta excellent - like the fusilli they make these a little thicker, so they have some chew to them, which I like. The tomato sauce absolutely delicious, and the meatballs - wonderful. Really some of the best meatballs I've had here, in or out of sauce. With a bottle of water and a dish of lemon ice cream at the end, 300 pesos for all.
And, on our duo visit, we debated between splitting a third pasta or a dessert. The latter won out. Tiramisu. Great flavor, though a little heavy on the whipped cream part of it. You have to dig down through a couple of centimeters of cream to get to the substance of the tiramisu. Once there, loved it. (130 pesos)
Cute room. Friendly, efficient service. Very good food. Very reasonable prices. Doña is going to be a regular go-to for pasta.
