A Plate of Ravioli for $48?

Just when I feel I’ve figured Uruguay out for the most part, it throws a curve my way.

Restaurants in the middle of nowhere are a thing in this country. In North America, location, location is the formula for success with an eatery. Find a street loaded with foot traffic and lots of other restaurants and you’re half way home. In the Land of the Sun? No no sir’ee, put ‘em 20 kilometers out of the nearest town on a unmarked dirt road with no signs in front of the establishment. Here, fine cafes are destination events. And the harder to find the better.

Francis Mallmann has followed the formula to a tee locating his over the top high-end boutique hotel in Garzon. Garwho? Well, Garzon is a wide and not very desirable place in the road about 30 kilometers inland from Jose Ignacio. But of course his trendy hotel/eatery is on a dirt road. So here it is…Gaucho-chic meets the Beverly Hill Billies. The dinning patio is appointed with lien covered tables, crystal stem ware, stray cats and dogs play around the tables and clunker trucks pass by on the dirt road a few meters away.

So how about the food? Well the ravioli may appear to be a bit pricy, but it’s stuffed with pumpkin and wine-braised chicken. That certainly explains the price. There’s the handmade gnocchi, think Iberian ham, a braised lamb dish garnished with arugula, almonds and lemon confit, pork tenderloin with burnt brown sugar and orange confit and the requisite meat cooked over roaring wood fires. His grilled meat dishes have a “burnt” flavor, “dissonance” he calls it. (Nothing else like that in Uruguay.) The price for all this good stuff is quite reasonable. Lunch for two with a bottle of wine will be $220 or so and dinner could be well north of $400.

So how does Mr. Mallmann get away with this? He is perhaps Argentina’s most acclaimed chef; he’s had a series of chic restaurants in Buenos Aires, Mendoza, New York and of course Jose Ignacio. His eateries in Jose Ignacio, La Posada del Mar and Los Negros, in no small way have help mold this sleepy fishing village into a jet-set resort.

So the next time you’re in Jose Ignacio with some time to kill, and a few hundred dollars you don’t need, head over to Francis’ place in Garzon.

Bon appetite!