I've walked by this place, Bar Mágico, Carlos Calvo 1631 in Constitución, numerous times and…read morewondered about it. I'd looked it up online and found that it's more or less a club for amateur and professional magicians here in town, as well as offering classes, and a couple of nights a week, magic shows. And a restaurant. Now, the shows are only Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, nights that I normally am not available, so this has been sitting deep in a magician's top hat waiting to be pulled out like a dove, for quite some time. And, this week, we just happened to end up with Friday night free, so, date night!
It's a pretty old building, with lots of lovely interior architectural detail. I imagine at one time it made a wonderful home for someone. They've divided the public space into two theaters....
Each of the three nights has a different approach to shows. Friday nights goes something like this.... You arrive at 9pm, you're seated in the main room, with a stage at one end. You get a menu, you order - it's pretty simple, basic, local fare. What wasn't made clear to us was the timing. If, and only if, you order appetizers, you get them within a few minutes, and you need to eat up fast (and not arrive late), because at 9:30, you're all asked to get up and move to the other theater, where a magician, down in front of a bleacher style seating area, performs card tricks. It's not all that easy to see unless you're right up front. I would say that his magic was excellent, but his patter and performance skills were pretty lacking - no charisma, and no connection with anyone in the audience except the two people right in front of him, who he spent the whole time directly interacting with as if they were the only ones in the room. Polite applause for the tricks, but a bit of a bore.
We were hungry, because we hadn't ordered appetizers, not understanding the setup. But after the thankfully short (30 minutes) show, we were all moved back to our tables in the main room. You really do want to have eaten your appetizers in full, because they've stripped the tables down and reset them for the main courses. It was now 10 p..m., and yes, you have just another half hour to eat, but that's just once your food arrives, you really have less, because dishes come out of the kitchen rather slowly. Not that you can't continue to eat during the next show at 10:30, but it's a magic show, you kind of want to pay attention, you know?
The food - very basic, very bland. We got a breaded chicken cutlet topped with unseasoned bechamel and some cheese, accompanied by some sliced potatoes (195 pesos). And we also got an unseasoned and overcooked piece of grilled salmon with some roasted herb potatoes (285 pesos). The potatoes on both plates were the best things there.
The second show was far more fun. This particular week, it was a musical, comedy magic duo. Mostly it was a lot of sleight of hand tricks, there was no real splashy magic. Honestly, it was all the kind of tricks that you get in one of those kids basic intro to magic sets. But with a really good routine, fun comedy songs, and two great personalities. Still, I have to admit, I'd kind of hoped for at least one really good, impressive magic trick. This show lasts an hour, until 11:30, at which point you get a dessert menu, and another half hour break, before a final 30-minute show at midnight back in the small theater. We decided we'd had enough and bailed on the last show, so I'm not sure what it involved, but given the setup, it had to be something similar to the card trick stuff - "close up magic".
All three shows are a mere 200 pesos, which isn't bad, even for just "ordinary" magic. It's a fun night out, the food, while boring, isn't inedible. You can drink, there's beer and wine. Do review your bill carefully. Ours arrived and was a solid 50% higher than expected. They'd charged us for 3 people for the shows, they'd charged us for a couple of rounds of beers which we hadn't had (just a bottle of wine), and they'd charged us for an appetizer we hadn't had. They tried to pass it off with "oh, those should have been on another table", but a couple of the other tables around us found similar extra charges, so, forewarned and all that. It was more than 500 pesos extra on our bill that they tried to slip in, and it wasn't even sleight of hand.
