Buenos Aires Creativity Lab

Maya from the Sexy Spanish Club in Buenos Aires, who I have yet to meet, though her husband Tom (whose company makes a pretty cool type of clasp-less Magnetic Bracelet) is a new friend of mine, alerted me to a free ‘creativity lab’ she is putting on in conjunction with creativity coach Malaya Llewellyn.

According to Maya’s last blog post, this free meeting will be…

“the first of many free gatherings to share lively conversation about creativity and connection! Whether you’re playing with paint, flour, film, cloth, words, programs, or products, you’re invited to join expats and Argentines alike to explore ideas and get inspired”.

Sounds interesting, and even if you are a bit of a cynic (like I am on occasion), I am sure it will be a great place to meet bloggers such as Maya, expats and locals here in Buenos Aires, all while trying out a new experience. Here’s the meeting details for those interested:

Lab – Playing In Flow
An evening of lighthearted collaboration with Malaya Llewellyn
7:30 pm, Tuesday, April 24th In Palermo on Beruti, near the Botanical Garden
[For details, email mvq@inteleto.com or call 4831-1664]

Not your kind of thing? Then maybe try this for size…

Free beer in Buenos Aires?

Mr Yanqui Mike, a 100% certified Buenos Aires blogging celebrity, is celebrating a year of blogging, and what’s more, a whopping great 10,000 visits during that time.

Being a gentleman and a scholar, Mike has promised readers an ice cold beer if they drop by Big Mamma’s Bar (Juramento 2156) in Belgrano this Saturday, April 21st, 5pm – 7pm, to celebrate his blogging milestone.

Love him or loathe him, there is free beer on offer, and you can’t argue with an offer like that

For exact details including a map link, and a chance to RSVP is you so wish, check out his latest blog post.

And in case you needed any further encouragement to attend either of these free meetings in Buenos Aires – there is also the chance that you will run into yours truly at one or both of them. Or did I mean discouragement? I always get those two words mixed up…

Armenia 1447 (between Gorriti and Jose A. Cabrera), Palermo Viejo

Following on from my recent review of the Buller Brewing Company bar in Recoleta, here comes the hotly awaited (by me!) second post in my Great Buenos Aires Beer Hunt series: my visit to the fairly new Antares Cerveza Pub in Palermo Viejo.

As you can see from the (possibly sight damaging) photo to the right, I also happened to go along to Antares on St Patrick’s Day, always an excellent excuse for beer drinking. A little bit more about such Irish shenanigans will follow the main event, as ever, the beer… (didn’t you know that beer is the new wine?)

Antares Pub: The Beer

Along for the beer drinking fun at Antares were fellow Buenos Aires bloggers Ken and Yanqui Mike, both of their lovely wives, and my good friend Agustin, who will no doubt be extremely unhappy with the picture I will post of him, in a silly hat, near the end of this page (if you don’t like beer, you should probably just scroll down for it).
Part of the reason for my series of beer related reviews at the moment is that I like the idea of being pictured with as many cute little beer samplers, that you find in the brewpubs here, as possible. A worthy and valiant quest you cannot deny. Here’s sampler number two, with the seven different beers to be found at Antares:

For all you facial hair haters out there, I can report that the silly beard has now been removed. I hope you’re happy now Of course, the eagle-eyed beer fans among you won’t have noticed the beard anyway… I’m sure the terrible green-tinged monstrosity in a glass to the right of shot will have drawn your your attention far more. Well, I guess that’s St Patrick’s day for you…

Green beer… Antares, I thought you were better than that! And replacing their Imperial Stout for the night too… a strange swap when you consider that stout really is a very Irish beer (and yes, I know that Imperial Stout was first produced for export to the Czars of Russia, but that’s a moot point). Anyway, I’ll forgive Antares a few slips, because they have some very good other beers, and anyway their Imperial Stout is not one of my favorites.

So, here goes a beer by beer summary, as discussed by Ken, Agustin and myself from our combined tasting notes at Antares (thanks to Ken for taking these down on his notepad and passing them to me), and some comparisons with similar beers available at Buller (see Ken’s notes on our trip there), for those keeping score. Before we start, here’s another quick look at the hopeful competitors, lined up before the judging panel of experts:

Running through these beers, left to right as you view them…

Kolsch

[5% alcohol, 8 pesos per pint]

This is a pilsner lager made after a style pioneered in Cologne, Germany. However, the Germans would probably not be too proud of this effort. The Kolsch at Antares is clean, transparent, and completely lacking in character. Without wanting to offend any PC folk out there, we did mention that it’s like a thin blond with no personality. The aroma, if anything, had a slight whiff of mixed herbs. All in all, not a great beer, but as far as lagers in Buenos Aires go, it is still at least 1000 times better than Quilmes.

Antares Kolsch can be compared to it’s fizzier cousin, the Light Lager at the Buller Brewing Company. However, the effervescent Light Lager has the personality the match it’s looks. 1-0 Buller.

Scotch Ale

[6% alcohol, 8 pesos per pint]

The Scotch Ale at Antares is simply fantastic. Possibly my favorite all round beer that I have tasted so far in Buenos Aires, and amazingly drinkable. It has a sweet aroma somewhat reminiscent of butterscotch, accompanied by an appropriately pleasing caramel color. The flavor is initially so smooth on the palette that you will be lulled into a false sense of security, but it soon moves about the mouth in a complex fashion that leads to an oh-so-welcome pleasantly hoppy finish. After you finish one pint, almost certainly quickly, you’ll want another.

Antares Scotch Ale, although in a league of it’s own, can be likened to the Oktoberfest at Buller, as both have tones of caramel and finish more tartly. However, the exceptional Antares effort scores two quick goals against Buller in quick succession, edging them into a 2-1 lead but with all still to play for.

Porter

[5.5% alcohol, 8 pesos per pint]

At first, the Antares version appears quite thin for a porter. However, it turns out to have hidden depths. At first, you are hit by a definite smell of molasses, which soon tempts you to dive in and taste the brew. And when you do, a welcoming committee of roasted malt and chestnut flavors make you feel at home, and continue to linger until you have taken your shoes off and have your feet up on the coffee table. But while you might indeed some expect coffee or chocolate tones to appear at any point, they fail to turn up for the party. But then Porter is a beer for the masses, and rightly so there should be no place for such bourgeois luxuries.

Antares Porter: A proletarian beer that certainly goes down a treat. There is no competing beer at Buller, so Antares knocks in two more goals to come in at half-time with a commanding 4-1 lead. Let’s hope they don’t get too complacent in the second period…

Cream Stout

[7% alcohol, 10 pesos per pint]

This cream stout arrives as expected, with a decent white creamy head and an opaque dark brown body, but it also was already settled… no enjoyable ‘Guinness’ effect to watch as the nitrogen does its work. I was feeling a herbal aroma here, quite possibly thyme, which is interesting for a stout. In the mouth a lovely creamy start dissipates all too quickly into something of a disappointment… not a whole lot going on here in the taste stakes.

The Cream Stout was a decent enough beer to toast St Patrick’s day with, but not one I will return to often, especially with the superior (and less expensive) Porter already on offer at Antares. The Dry Stout at Buller, with it’s deliciously strong chocolate coffee flavors, beats Antares here to pull the score back to 4-2.

Honey Beer

[7.5% alcohol, 10 pesos per pint]

The Honey beer arrived with a clear yellow appearance, similar to lager. However, upon closer inspection you will see that the beer is in fact slightly syrupy in texture… thicker than a lager beer. There certainly is a lot of honey present in the aroma, but unfortunately not a whole lot of it in the taste. And so, it did not live up to our high expectations.

Maybe the Antares Honey Beer would have rated higher if we had not tried the excellent Buller version first. All the same, Antares are now holding on to a tight lead having let Buller back in the game at 4-3.

Barley Wine

[10% alcohol, 8 pesos per pint]

Not going to say too much about this one. If the honey beer was syrupy, this is simply viscous. Not my idea of a good quality in a beer. We were promised a bitter flavor and tones of licorice and fruit, however all we got was a sour taste and a beer that does not hide its high alcohol content very well at all. Antares suggests their Barley Wine as an after dinner drink with a cigar. Not being cigar smokers ourselves, we decided to pass.

Although not to our taste at all, Barley Wine is a unique beer that will not be enjoyed by many people. And as Buller do not have any close equivalent, the score remains 4-3 to Antares, going in to added time…

Cerveza de Treboles (Green ‘Shamrock’ Beer)

[This was a guest beer. The usual Imperial Stout, which it replaced for the night, is fairly nice, and packs a punch at 8.5% alcohol, costing 10 pesos per pint]

Damnations, why if it isn’t the Kolsch coming back to haunt us, along with some green food coloring in the hope that we would give it a second chance. Your ploy failed miserably Kolsch, and even worse, you’ve just scored an own goal to peg Antares back to an unsatisfactory (but all the same enjoyable) 4-4 draw.

So, which place is better for a lover of beer, Antares or Buller? To be honest, both places are great if you stick to their strengths. At Buller try the refreshing Light Lager, or their strong and flavorsome Honey Beer. At Antares you have a quite remarkable Scotch Ale, alongside the almost as enjoyable and equally drinkable Porter. To be honest, if it were to go down to a penalty shoot-out, Antares would edge it, because of those two fantastic beers… Buller may have a more consistent level of quality, but Antares has two surefire match winners up it’s sleeve.

And yes, my extreme apologies for the silly soccer metaphor thread running through this post. I guess beer and soccer will always be inextricably linked in my simple beer-addled English mind:)

Antares Bar – The Place and the Prices

Antares is a very nicely done, brand spanking new bar that fits in very well with the other stylish locations found around it in Palermo Viejo. From the large shiny beer dispensers to the several pieces of beer related memorabilia, and especially the extremely long bar, there is something for every serious ale drinker. And for those more interested in the ambiance and design of the place, it is beautifully done in a very modern way, and the place does get buzzing fairly early, so Antares does not disappointed on these scores either.

Finally, in terms of prices, it’s a steal. Pints are either 8 or 10 pesos each, which is decent enough for good quality beer like this, but with a daily 7pm-9pm happy ‘hour’, when pints are two for the price of one, 4 to 5 pesos for a pint is top value. Let’s just hope they can keep the prices and happy hour this way, and not cave in to the spiraling prices we are seeing across the rest of the city.

A Little St Patrick’s Day Fun

Finally, here’s a few annotated pics from a fun and interesting night at Antares, for your viewing pleasure …

(Bagpipes and kilts on St Patrick’s day… haven’t we got the wrong Celtic country here, Antares?)

(Now that’s better. The bagpipes were soon followed by a traditional Irish three-piece band playing good old fashioned Irish folk tunes. Enough to get us into the spirit of the night…?…)

(The Irish music worked. Soon we were all under the St Patrick’s day spell and wearing silly shamrock hats. In the case of the above picture of my friend, silly certainly is the operative word! Please don’t kill me for posting this Agustin! )

Anyway, enough of the silliness, and onto the serious business of rating this bar…

Antares: The Verdict

• Bar Rating: (4/5) A couple of excellent ales at decent prices, which can be drunk in a very well appointed, shiny new bar. A winning combination.
• BA Authenticity: (3/5) As I have said before, beer is not a particularly Buenos Aires kind of thing, but some authenticity marks are picked up by the very BA like stylish interior.
• Value: (4/5) Antares would certainly get 5/5 during the 7pm-9pm happy ‘hour’ – 4 pesos for a pint of some of the best beer in Buenos Aires is a steal. And even at 8 pesos per pint the rest of the time, you are getting great value at Antares.

Buenos Aires Argentina Guide Special Tip

Go along for the happy ‘hour’ from 7 to 9pm. Sit at the lovely, long, shiny inviting bar. Drink 2 pints of Scotch Ale, followed by two pints of porter, a perfectly achievable and enjoyable feat during a period of about two hours. At this point you should be happy, satisfied, and, even if you didn’t speak Spanish before, conversing fluently with the amiable bar staff at Antares. Nothing like a little alcohol to help grease the language skills!

And after all that, you’ll only be down 16 pesos, or around 5 US Dollars. Sounds like a bargain to me! Say hello if you see me there

For your information, I’m writing this week’s Buenos Aires blog roundup slowly in between itching the many mosquito bites that have ravaged my poor body. Unfortunately we have a bit of a mosquito invasion here in the city of Buenos Aires at the moment, although at least it looks (correct me if I’m wrong) like there is no risk of Dengue here in the city (unlike in parts of Buenos Aires province, and further north in Misiones). Still, the bites don’t half itch a lot, so apologies if my itching-triggered lack of concentration causes any errors in this roundup…

Buenos Aires Blog Posts of the Week

• This week’s top posts are about three new things that I’m pretty certain I will love. First up, Robert points out that a cafe has just opened up on the ground floor of the Palacio Barolo, a building that fascinates pretty much everyone, including Robert and I. It looks beautiful in Robert’s pictures, and despite the hefty, touristy prices (9 pesos for a cafe con leche with 3 medialunas!!!), I will definitely be checking it out in the near future
• Secondly, Dan from Saltshaker has been privy to a sneak preview of the food at an authentic Indian restaurant that will apparently be opening in Barrio Norte (Laprida and Charcas) later this month. It will be called Tandoor, and hopefully will provide the quality Indian food many of us expats have been missing since arriving in Buenos Aires
• Thirdly, Disco Shawn (still my vote for top blogger pseudonym of the year), introduces us to the Chilean indie musician Javiera Mena, who will be playing in Buenos Aires this Friday, March 16th at Club Niceto in Palermo Hollywood, during their indie music night Compass. From the tracks linked to in that blog post, her stuff sounds pretty good (I like my “cute, keyboard-driven pop goodness”, as Shawn describes it), so I will probably try to make my way to Compass this Friday

Things to See and Do in Buenos Aires

• Karine has yet more lovely pics from around Buenos Aires, this week including two stunning city monuments: El Monumento de los Españoles in Palermo, and the monument to General Jose de San Martin, in Plaza San Martin (where else?!), Retiro – a fitting tribute to Argentina’s main independence hero
• Argentina’s Travel Guide has some interestingly varied things to do in Buenos Aires this week, ranging from the “Thursday night transvestite party” at Club Niceto to attending an Argentine league soccer game (in this case at the River Plate stadium), and finally taking in a trip to a meditation center in Palermo after to reflect on what sounds like a very interesting week!
• For all of you budding Tango dancers on your way to Buenos Aires to strut your stuff, Tango Cherie provides the inside knowledge of what NOT to wear to a milonga in Buenos Aires… please take note!

Buenos Aires Information, News and General Comments

• Great news: everyone’s favorite trilingual blog, Trendy Palermo Viejo, celebrated it’s first anniversary of blogging this week, and long may Dalila continue bringing us the coolest shops, restaurants and more from this most happening of Buenos Aires barrios And what better way to celebrate than with a post recapping the latest shops that have opened in Palermo Viejo?!

Buenos Aires Restaurants, Food and Drink

• Yanqui Mike made his way to the last night of the Buenos Aires beer festival, but as I had suspected, it was more of a glorified rock concert than anything else, and even worse, Mike came away disappointed without even a drop of beer passing his lips. Considering the festival organizers obviously know the rules about not serving alcoholic beverages during musical performances here, you have to wonder why they bother having live music at what is, after all, supposed to be a beer festival. Or change the name to something less misleading. Bad show all round
• Dan from Saltshaker posted a review of Piola Pizzeria in Recoleta this week, giving you another (more qualified!) viewpoint on their pizza in addition to my recent review of Piola Buenos Aires. For the record, I enjoyed the Pizza more than Dan, but he experienced far better service than I did. Now if only they could get both things right at the same time…

Funny or Odd Stuff in Buenos Aires

• In the Argentine Metropolis discusses the English words that have been making their way into Argentine Spanish over the past few years, and also in the same post overhears a really funny conversation between a middle-aged woman and her father in a Palermo fashion cafe… frapuccino indeed!

Not too many posts this week… did I miss anything, or were you all just as lay as me this week?

As for my blog, I promise that very soon there will be some other posts on this blog apart from the weekly blog roundups… I’m sure I can at least manage another bar review or something, you know, for the benefit of my readers… nothing to do with my hankering for a few decent beers now and again of course!

This roundup post is late, as usual, so no messing around this week folks… let’s just get straight into the Buenos Aires, Argentina linky goodness from last week…

Buenos Aires Argentina Blog Posts of the Week

• Matt Bites, who appears to be thoroughly enjoying a holiday in Buenos Aires and the general Rio de la Plata area, penned a mouthwatering review of the La Cabrera parrilla in Palermo Viejo, one of the best places to eat meat in BA. Although… drinking Torrontes instead of Malbec wine as an accompaniment to steak… don’t they kill for such crimes against Argentine sensibilities round these parts?
• Matt Chesterton, editor of the Time Out guides to Buenos Aires, has been writing a fantastic series about hotels in Buenos Aires… my runaway favorite has to be his post on classic hotels in BA, mainly for his wedding night anecdote from the Hotel Castelar.. seriously, a must read!
• I couldn’t find a third Matthew to make this a ‘Mattrick’ of top blog posts (were there any other Matts writing about BA this week?)… so we’ll have to make do with the closest I could find…a Marc. He recently announced on Asado Argentina that he has launched a new photo blog of southern Argentina. OK, so it’s not Buenos Aires… but from time to time we city dwellers need to be reminded that real life does exist outside of the metropolis, and his first few pictures provide some beautiful examples of that fact

Things to See and Do in Buenos Aires

• The Argentina Travel blog had some more great tips and reviews this week for things to see and do in Buenos Aires, including the slightly totally crazy Parque Tierra Santa, a Christian theme park that sees an 18 meter Jesus Christ (!) resurrected every half hour. They also have the lowdown on the equally aesthetically pleasing Flor de Metal sculpture and El Ateneo bookshop, both to be found in the barrio of Recoleta
• More lovely pictures from Karine this week, featuring the Palacio de Tribunales building, a pretty San Telmo antiques shop, the Falklands war memorial monument in Plaza San Martin, and some Palacio Barolo facts and pictures, one of my favorite buildings in Buenos Aires, on one of my favorite streets, Avenida de Mayo
• A new entrant to the now splitting-at-the-seams Buenos Aires blogosphere is Discovering BA. Their first few posts include one with a nice picture and comment on another of my favorite buildings here, the French Embassy, jutting out there down at the end of 9 de Julio. One thing though… their blog has me down as ‘A Blog about BA Blogs‘ in their link list… a sign that maybe I should be cutting down on these roundups and ramping up on my own posts, maybe?
• Robert keeps us bang up to date on the renovations and new shade of pink being given to the Casa Rosada (Pink House), the presidential HQ of Argentina based in Plaza de Mayo. Looks like things are coming along really nicely!

Buenos Aires Info, News and General Comments

• Diva has been ranting and raving a lot lately – but it is all very entertaining so I hope she keeps it up, even if it does no good for her blood pressure. This week, she reveals the secret language of Argentine girls, questions why portenos are so proud of themselves, defines the intriguing Argentine phenomenon known as El Chanta (watch out for even more ranting and raving from anonymous commenters!), and analyzes a range of porteno men in their twenties. Hard-hitting stuff, keep it up Diva!

Buenos Aires Restaurants, Food & Drink

• In between rants Diva also found time to review one of her favorite restaurants in Buenos Aires, an Armenian restaurant in Palermo Soho called Sarkis, which was also reviewed a long while back by Saltshaker – both of these recommendations means that this place is easily number 1 on my restaurants to visit list right now – I’m hungry just thinking about it!
• After our recent trip to the Buller Pub in Recoleta, Ken wrote down our ‘imaginative’ joint tasting notes on the six Buller beers, and I soon followed suit with my own review of the Buller’s Recoleta BrewPub, which kicks off what will surely be a very enjoyable (for me) series of postings on where to find the best beer in Buenos Aires
• Robert is trudging through a similar quest to my beer holy grail, that of finding the best wines available in the shops of Buenos Aires. Oh the hardships we go through in the name of good blogging! You can read his latest finds in Divino Vino 9 – this week all from a Patagonian winery called Bodega NQN
• Slightly less appealing, but still very much a feature of Buenos Aires cuisine, is the honest, humble Super Pancho. Ken gets into the local spirit and tries out this most inexpensive of Argentine snacks

Funny or Odd Stuff in Buenos Aires

• A very strange story to end with this week. Ian from Goodairs reports that La Doce (The Twelth Man), the hardcore supporters of Boca Juniors football team, are exporting their special brand of hooliganism to the rest of the world for profit. Today Columbia and Mexico are taking advantage, but who knows, soon Rochdale vs Accrington Stanley in English League Division two will be seeing chants of “you can stick your flatcap up your ar*e”, before mass riots ensue, whippets and pint tankards flying in all directions.

Sorry about the lame/irrelevant Northern England football jokes at the end there, I just get carried away sometimes! See you all next week for another Buenos Aires blog roundup!

[Also has a downtown pub location at Paraguay 428]

The Buller brewpub in Recoleta is one of the few places in Buenos Aires where you can get a proper pint of beer. By ‘proper’, I mean two things. Firstly, served in a traditional pint glass. That is key. Beer just tastes better that way. But secondly, and far more importantly, the BEER MUST TASTE GOOD, and not like the mass-produced cats piss that is served in the majority of bars across the world, and is especially prevalent in Argentina, where Quilmes, high on preservatives and additives but low on any kind of taste whatsoever, prevails.

In fact, at first look it seems so difficult to get decent beer at a reasonable price in Buenos Aires, that you might just give up. I know I did… I tried for a while, then decided I would just have to forget about this great drink that is so close to my heart for the duration of my stay in Argentina. But then I took a trip home to the UK at Christmas, including a pilgrimage to the Fuller’s brewery (makers of the finest beer on the face of the planet), and reignited my passion for the real drink of the gods. And so, once back in Buenos Aires, I decided to start a series of posts that will go under the grandiose name of…

The Great Buenos Aires Beer Hunt

I mean, what would life be like without good beer? It just doesn’t bear thinking about…

A Short Introduction to Beer in Buenos Aires

Asado Argentina wrote an excellent introduction about beers that are available in Argentina, although it doesn’t make for great reading for a beer fan like myself… there is not a whole lot of flavorful beer to be found easily here, and most of the time you will have to make do with the usual suspects of Quilmes, Isenbeck, Brahma (from neighbors Brazil), and some ‘international’ beers that are actually made under license in Argentina and are closer to Quilmes than anything else: Heineken, Warsteiner, Budweiser and Stella Artois. In fact, in think Quilmes does brew most or all of those in Argentina!

There are fortunately some far better beers to be found in Buenos Aires, but you are going to have to hunt them down. An excellent starting point for such a search is this beer ’scooping’ report on Buenos Aires (apparently scooping means finding new beers to tick off your list… like a beer version of train spotting), which shows that there is a large amount of small breweries and brewpubs dotted around Buenos Aires, waiting to be found… but also that many are closing, I guess due to lack of business (this is not a beer city).

Anyway, Buller, being a few blocks from my new apartment, is as good as any to start… although I am expecting things to only get better from here on out in this series of beer posts. As you can see from this following photo, it looks like I am in for a long, hard, arduous slog to discover decent beer in Buenos Aires…

The things a man has to do in the name of investigative blogging!

Buller: The Beer

I went along to Buller with my new friend Ken and his lovely wife Helen, a norteamericano couple here for six months to learn Spanish. Fortunately Ken wields a mean pen and notepad, and he jotted down all of our tasting notes and posted them up in his blog, Un Ano Sin Primavera, reviewing six different beers in all; the full Buller range. No, we didn’t both drink six pints (although it is tempting), instead we had the sample taster that Buller do for AR$17, with cute little quarter pint (maybe smaller) glasses, as seen in the pictures above, and this one too, with names shown on the table placemat underneath:

The Winner: Honey Beer

As you will note from Ken’s posting of our over-the-top tasting notes, the best beers at Buller are the refreshing Light Lager, the deceptively alcholic and complex Honey Beer and the coffee-chocolate Dry Stout, with the ‘Cotton Candy’ Oktoberfest not far behind. Really the Cream and Indian Pale Ales were nothing special, and did not contain anything like the level of hoppiness that beers in that style should.

However, the beers were not of exceptionally high quality. Don’t get me wrong, they are great in comparison with Quilmes, but nothing there knocked me off my feet. The closest to doing so was the Honey Beer (not just because of its 8.5% alcohol content!), which will be my drink of choice when I return to Buller (it is basically my local pub, after all). Being a worthy winner, it deserved another pint, and a picture all to itself, as can be seen to the right of this text.

However, I have a feeling that other pubs here will bring greater beery delights: in fact I already know there are better beers at Antares in Palermo, which will probably be the next post in this series, and the scooping report suggests there are far better beers out there I have yet to try. Oh, but I will. And how!

Buller: Recoleta Location, Recoleta Prices

The pub is located in the ‘tourist strip’ of bars, clubs and restaurants that runs along calle R. M. Ortiz, right in front of that most famous (and fascinating) of Buenos Aires tourist attractions, the Recoleta Cemetery. However, I think it is probably one of the most pleasant places along this strip, almost completely due to the nice patio area it has out the front. I guess it is quite fitting for a pub that sells an Oktoberfest beer to have its own beer garden – I would say you could close your eyes and imagine you are in Munich, but really the beer isn’t anywhere near that good. Here is a shot of a parasol in the beer garden, with another photo soon after showing the lovely green surround:

All the same, I can’t imagine many better things to do on a hot Buenos Aires evening that to sit in the beer patio at Buller and have a few Light Lagers, or a couple of Honey Beers… oh OK then, make it a few of those too, seeing as I live within staggering distance home

The thing that always put me off Buller before was the prices. At AR$12 to AR$15 a pint, it costs at least two to three times as much for a pint as you would pay for a whole liter of Quilmes elsewhere. OK, so maybe it does taste two to three times better than Quilmes, but it is still way overpriced.

Happy Hour, How I love Thee So

But fortunately, the old ‘happy hour’ comes to the rescue. Buller stretch theirs from 6pm to 9pm EVERY DAY, at which point the beers cost from AR$7 to AR$9 a pint, which is far more reasonable, although still a little bit much by my book. Obviously being the cheapskate that I am, happy hour will almost certainly be the only time I return to Buller for my hit of Honey Beer. You can drink a suprisingly enjoyable amount in three hours if you really put your mind to it…

Buller Pub and Brewery: The Verdict

• Bar Rating:   (4/5) A very nice beer garden, some very decent beers, pretty good american style pub food on offer, authentic brewery vats visible in the window (see photo below), and a great location for visitors to the city – an all round good performer in the bar stakes.
• BA Authenticity:  (2/5) Beer is certainly not a Buenos Aires specialty, and the beers and garden at Buller are more German in style. However, the fairly slow service is very authentically BA, so they get an extra mark for that, whether they want it or not!
• Value:  (2/5) Buller would get a 3/5 during happy hour, but it is a 2/5 at all other times.. very expensive beer by Buenos Aires standards, but nothing exceptional in return for this extra cash. Once again, you are probably paying extra for a prime Recoleta location.

Buenos Aires Argentina Guide Special Tip

I would recommend going in the happy ‘hour’ of 6pm to 9pm, when the prices are more reasonable, and if possible, on a balmy summer evening at this time, when the beer garden is a great place to sup a few pints in. Drink up!

And another quick tip for beer fans… make sure you keep checking back to this blog for more pub reviews as I attempt to track down the best pints of beer in the city of Buenos Aires… next up, I think, is Antares in Palermo…