Buenos Aires Restaurant Lessons

It sometimes takes the fresh eyes of first-time visitors to make locals see what's good about their dining scene. In a piece written after a recent trip to Buenos Aires, San Francisco Chronicle food writer Michael Bauer annotes some local dining habits that rightly deserve praise: the tiny table-side Service Table, so you can get some shit off your main table; big ass napkins; chilled red wine; and, yes, the personal ice bucket. And over at NPR.org, correspondent Julie McCarthy (no, not Lingerie Bowl star Jenny McCarthy) reminds us that there is more than steak down here in Buenos Aires. Dominga, for example, cuts raw fish into some nice sushi. "Sushi chef Gabriel Ilepiane is an artist whose creations brim with whimsy. On a recent visit, he presents me with a plate loaded with sushi arranged around curlicues of green wasabi and red ginger, and I think: 'If Christmas were a sushi platter, this would be it,'" McCarthy writes. "For a fraction of the price ($25), the dinner was every bit as good as anything I ate when I lived and worked in Tokyo."

Of course, we hear at Cliché Alert Inc. must point out tritenesses inflicted on the reading public, and thus the following cannot pass without note:

Over a bottle of Malbec at the small bar tucked in the rear of the stylishly lit restaurant, owner Ignacio Ortiz de Rozas reveals the secret to his success: It's not due just to good food, but to a caring staff.