Hadas Goshen Buenos Aires, 513 East Sixth Street.

As a person of encroaching middle age, I have a largely declinist worldview. Certain things, however, give me hope for the next generation, including the large numbers of thoughtful young persons who have rejected their parents’ counsel in order to engage in pleasingly unhealthful activities, including smoking, drinking to excess, and the eating of large quantities of red meat. Thus, despite public service ads advising Americans to eat more “plant matter,” the 16-ounce steak is making a comeback in the youth setting of the East Village.

Allow me, then, to introduce Buenos Aires, a restaurant at 513 East Sixth Street which features the high-cholesterol cuisine of the South American pampas. I would be predisposed towards any restaurant with that name, since in Buenos Aires I learned to eat cuts of meat, and even inner organs, that I had never tried before; at a little stand in San Telmo — the city’s East Village, more or less — I ate rich, greasy slabs of flank steak taken straight from the grill and slapped between thick slices of white bread. ‘Twas very Heaven.

Buenos Aires-the-restaurant is a no-funny-business steak place. The décor features a few standard photos of tango dancers, and two large-screen TVs which are turned to soccer games night and day, thus bathing the place in the electric green glow of distant soccer fields. You can, if you wish, order spaghetti, lobster, chicken or various kinds of milanese—breaded beef cutlet. But why bother? Stick to the house specialty.
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