HOSTEL COLONIAL - BUENOS AIRES RESTAURANTS OR HOUSES? (vía THE GUARDIAN)

Today I read this note in The Guardian and I really liked. Here you can read some paragraph or can click on the title of this post and go to original full post.

I like recommending things to my city in this blog of Hostel Colonial and this is one of them

In Buenos Aires chefs are turning their own homes into restaurants – offering affordable dining and the perfect place to meet locals.

Across Buenos Aires, behind nondescript front doors and in family living rooms, a host of homespun restaurants are the latest foodie fad. The tricky bit is finding them – and I fall at the first hurdle.

Almacen Secreto, or the Secret Store (+54 911 4854 9131), is – as its name suggests – virtually impossible to locate. Admittedly, I've forgotten to write down the street number, but it's also because it's on an unremarkable road in the residential Villa Crespo neighbourhood. I stride straight past. It's easily done. The anodyne corrugated door, framed by two lonely pot plants and some graffiti, is a stone's throw from a tatty antiques warehouse and railway line.

This is just one of a growing number of puertas cerradas, or closed-door restaurants, springing up across Buenos Aires. "Before, it was all about being seen," says Almacen Secreto founder Maria Morales, "Everyone wanted flashy restaurants with floor-to-ceiling windows onto the street. Now it seems people want something more intimate, much more personal."

And that's exactly what she provides. Almacen Secreto offers a shaded courtyard and simple dining room with so few tables that guests mingle naturally. At lunch I find myself next to some circus school students. Maria's menu divides the country into three regions and I opt for a tender braised Patagonian lamb with rosemary and roast potatoes. Like the food, earthenware crockery, and artwork lining the walls and gallery, the wine is home grown, from small bodegas whose "wines you won't find in any supermarket."

"You hear about these restaurants by word of mouth," says the circus school teacher Hernan Carbon. "A friend sent me an email about this place, and I've been coming ever since."

Fortunately, from their highly secretive beginnings, increasing popularity has earned the closed-door restaurants mentions in Time Out Buenos Aires and other guides, and most hotels can now help too – so you need neither local contacts nor advanced Spanish to seek them out. Alternatively, an internet search for "puertas cerradas Buenos Aires" brings up blogs and Facebook fan clubs.......More? Go to the original post