El Gaucho Uses Garlic to Breathe Life Into Argentine Cuisine

Should El Gaucho, an Argentine restaurant of some style, decide to embark upon an international franchise program, buy all the garlic futures you can get your hands on.

Previous trips to Argentine restaurants have failed to turn up anything remotely like garlic salsa. (The Indians whip up a garlic-chili pepper chutney that could fuel a jet aircraft, but that’s another story.) But El Gaucho, which presumably buys garlic by the crate, serves an admirable, faintly hot and ultimately very tasty salsa composed of nothing more than coarsely chopped garlic, olive oil and perhaps a touch of cayenne. It’s enough to leave you breathless--a situation that friends and loved ones might find preferable.

This is but one of a quartet of condiments that, along with a basket of crusty bread slices meant for dunking, arrives at table while guests study the menus. The other choices include highly spiced, garlic-laden green olives; chimichurri , the favorite Argentine dressing of crushed green herbs with garlic, oil and a drop of vinegar; and a more typically Mexican salsa cruda powered with plenty of jalapenos and, of course, much garlic. The house margaritas are quite good, and they come in handy at this point.

A Cosmopolitan Focus

El Gaucho concentrates less on the relatively simple cooking of the pampas than on the vastly more cosmopolitan cuisine of Buenos Aires, a city that boasts an immense number of citizens of Italian heritage. In Buenos Aires, the incredible supply of meat (the country sells beef to the world and consumes enormous portions at home) has been married with subtler cooking styles to provide a rich selection of savory dishes.

Thus the El Gaucho menu, while featuring a wide variety of steaks, also runs to lamb, pastas and what it calls “ cocina mama, “ which we might translate as “Ma’s home cooking.” In this last category are two exceptionally popular Italian-Argentine dishes, the simple milanesa of veal and the more complicated milanesa napolitana .

El Gaucho joins the growing list of sophisticated eateries clustered in the fashionable Rio Tijuana district. Its location is perhaps the most convenient of any, since it is quite close to the border. From the San Ysidro border crossing, simply take the Avenida de los Ninos Heroes exit, make a complete circuit around the first traffic circle (at the Tijuana Cultural Center) and turn right at the first opportunity, which is Avenida Leona Vicario, although there is not now a sign to that effect. El Gaucho is midway down the block, an attractive structure marooned among uncleared brush and bulldozed construction sites.

The restaurant is quite handsome, the proportions spacious and the lighting dim; at about 8 p.m., a pianist appears and launches quietly but well into a series of tangos. A chief fixture, which one notices only if seated in the front dining room, is the large, open grill flanked by a well-stocked butcher’s case. The head cook presides here, and a glance at whatever happens to be sizzling at the moment may be sufficient to determine what you will order. Still, it pays to consult the menu.

It also pays to include a Spanish-speaking guest in the party, since several dishes have unfamiliar names and it can be difficult to find a staff member who is able to interpret. A mixture of extremely broken Spanish, English and sign language was only moderately successful in dealing with an otherwise willing young server.

However, the kitchen by and large delivered on everything that was ordered. Argentine cooks pride themselves on their empanadas , stuffed flaky pastries that, depending on size, can be appetizers, hearty snacks or full meals. El Gaucho serves them appetizer-size, stuffed with a choice of traditional, highly seasoned meat filling or a rich corn-and-cheese blend that goes down ever so easily.

Small Plates of Sausage

Another excellent starter is a platter of the pimientos morron asados , or roasted green pepper slices, served hot under a coating of--what else?--coarsely chopped garlic. Small plates of sausage arrive hot from the grill, and the choice is of morcilla , the dark Spanish blood sausage, or chorizo, which, despite the name, is in this case Italian rather than Mexican or Spanish. It is an obvious example of the culinary interplay in Buenos Aires.

The soup choices, untried upon a recent visit, include a creamy bean preparation and jugo de carne , or beef consomme. The menu also offers four salads and, since it makes sense to sample Caesar salad in Tijuana, this one was tasted. It was much more pristine and more typically Mexican than the sometimes overwrought Caesars tossed on the San Diego side of the border; a generous amount of oil smoothed the dressing and brought a certain richness to the crisp hearts of Romaine.

An effort was made to share an order of pasta as a separate course, but was abandoned when it seemed likely that the table would be brought three full-size portions. However, the selection is attractive and includes homemade ravioli in tomato sauce, cannelloni and spaghetti Bolognese.

The grill list runs from churrasco , the classic Argentine steak marinated in chimichurri , to a rib-eye, several filets, fajitas , parillada mixta (a mixed grill of steak, ribs and sausage) and lamb cutlets. The filete de la casa (“house filet”) was surprisingly tender, given that beef in Mexico can be on the tough side, and had a good, if mild, flavor that indicated at least a brief acquaintance with a marinade.

Simple, Moist and Tasty

A guest who hoped to sample the cocina mama tried unsuccessfully to order the pollo a la portuguesa , or chicken Portuguese-style. The kitchen did agree to toss a half-bird on the grill, though, and this simple pollo a la parilla proved to be moist and tasty. Mama, or whoever cooks under that name, did find time to prepare a milanesa de ternera napolitana , or breaded veal cutlet baked under slices of mortadella sausage, mild cheese and fresh tomato sauce. Although this popular, everyday dish is prepared all over Argentina, El Gaucho’s version may fail to capture the applause of San Diego visitors unless the restaurant can learn how to tenderize the meat. This was the only unsatisfactory dish served.

Just like American steakhouses, El Gaucho offers cheesecake for dessert, and a good one at that, creamy throughout and buried beneath a cherry topping. The postre El Gaucho seems a happy mediation between Argentine and Mexican tastes; it consists of crepes stuffed with cajeta (a rich caramel sauce), sprinkled with coarse sugar and heated over the charcoal grill. It is just a little bit different, and worth a try.

* EL GAUCHO

1420 Avenida Leona Vicario, Tijuana

706-634-1039

Lunch and dinner Wednesday through Monday; closed Tuesday.

Dinner for two, including a glass of wine, tax and tip, $30 to $60.