It has been well over a year since I left my previous place of work and, rather, shamefully, I have not seen much of my work wife (now annulled) Rachel. I blame her, despite it being me who has generally had to cancel previous arranged meet-ups.

A relatively slack August gave me a bit more flexibility (and incentive to get off my arse and into town – a rare occurrence these days) and I needed to go to the market to pick up some seafood (to give a paella a go on the new kamado – an attempt widely ridiculed on Twitter, Meta et al or whatever they are now called 🙄).

Lunch was, therefore, arranged and the newly opened Gauchos in the City centre was the chosen venue.

Couple of things drew me to the place, with me paying (at least my share, Rachel having welshed/welched on the alimony payments I feel I am rightly due), these being:

• Free corkage on a Monday (if you read the wine list here you will see how important that is to a wine drinking miser like me); and
• A fixed price lunch menu (see above re miserly me)

As Rachel, despite my best endeavours, is not much of a wine drinker (and oddly seems to prefer the company of her husband and son on Monday evenings to mine – I mean 🤷‍♂️), we settled on a lunch time visit.

The place is very swish inside and I somewhat lowered the tone with my trampy chic attire (I actually did get out of the manky t-shirt, shorts and flip-flops ensemble, I tend to live in these days, after Mrs SF said ” You can’t meet Rachel looking like that!” )

The lunch menu price of 2 course for £25 and 3 for £28,

puts it in direct competition (at lunch time) with the likes of Asador 44 (of which I am a big fan – assume it and Pasture are likely to be this place’s main competition) and Maison du Beouf (which I haven’t been to yet and, if truth be told, am in no great hurry to do so either).

From the choice of starters, the mini Argentinian sausage selection was an easy choice. I like beetroot, but going veggie in an Argentine themed steak house is akin (to my mind, at least) to ordering the chicken and chips in a curry house.

Before I get into the “meat“, no pun intended, of what we had I am going to have a little moan/rant.

It alway slightly surprises me that there are:

•  vegan options in a place so clearly dedicated to meat; and
• why a vegan would actually ever want to go to a place that centres so much on meat.

Based on most vegans (I assume) being so for ideological reasons, wouldn’t the sight and smell of meat be distressing and if I were a vegan (never going to happen) I would be in constant fear of cross contamination.

Why meat orientated restaurants like this feel compelled to cater for what is a tiny minority of the population I have never worked out. I can’t believe it actually makes them any money (with duplication of resources, small volumes of sales etc. even if the base ingredients are cheaper) and I am pretty sure it is not because they are nice (most restaurants, whilst run by nice people, are not charitable endeavours).

Also, probably to avoid triplication of effort, the slightly larger (5% ish) veggie populus often seem to get lumbered with just a vegan option – kills two birds with one stone I suppose (not very vegan or indeed veggie that, is it).

More places (where veggie dishes are a secondary focus) than should also seem to get it wrong anyway, cheese often being the achilles heel, such that their efforts to cater for vegans and veggies ends up backfiring in any event.

Here the al a carte and lunch menus seem to make the error of labelling stuff as vegan when it isn’t even vegetarian. On the date of our visit, the ” ve – vegan and V- vegetarian” gnocchi dish was advertised as coming with parmesan, which has to be made with animal rennet (if it isn’t, it ain’t parmesan – DOP rules require it).

As such, the dish is either 1) not vegan or, indeed even, veggie; or 2) incorrectly referenced as including parmesan.

For a large enterprise like this, that seems a pretty basic error to make if you ask me. I suspect this sort of thing winds vegans and veggies up more than not having a vegan/veggie option at all on the menu.

Based on the gnocchi error, if I were a veggie I would be asking serious questions about what goat’s cheese is used in the rigatoni dish (the only other “veggie” main) as many (although by no means all) goats cheeses utilise animal rennet.

The food

Anyway enough of the rant, I quite enjoyed my mini (on the al a carte it is £19.50, at I assume a much larger size that is meant to be shared) “definitely not veggie” Argentine sausage selection.

The chorizo (more akin to the Mexican than the Spanish style) had a nice paprika hit to it and plenty of porkiness. A couple of pieces were a little too charred for my liking on one side,

which suggested they weren’t turned on the grill in time, but still had a pretty good flavour.

The morcilla (blood sausage) was very nice, rich with a slightly metallic tanginess (a lighter version than the Burgos variety I usually favour). Pick of the two sausages I would say and it was a shame there were only two of them as against the 4 pieces of chorizo. An even split would have been better in my view.

The accompanying picante rojo worked well enough with both sausages, but was a  tad on the tame side chilli wise (and I am far from being a chilli fiend). As for the lemon aioli, I initially thought it an odd accompaniment, but I quite enjoyed it. Lots of garlic (Mrs. SF said I reeked of it on returning home), but it would have benefited from a bit more lemon in the mix.

Rachel has the veggie option (mainly as the blood sausage horrified her)

and have to say this was pretty good. Nice balance of earthy, sweet and heat. Shame the nasturtium leaf had seen better days.

On to the main, I decided on the very Argentine churrusco cudril (rump basically)

This was billed as a spiral cut, which as far as I can tell simply entails cutting it pretty much in half to allow for a quicker cook (and, which the cynic in me strongly suspects is the main reason, is maybe intended to give the impression of a bigger steak).

I requested it rare which was just about delivered on,

but to me the main issue was the grill it was cooked on clearly wasn’t hot enough to give it a proper sear and that nice carameled crust on the exterior that comes with that.

In terms of flavour it also (partly, but not entirely, due to the lack of an adequate sear) left me a bit wanting, with it lacking the real depth of flavour I associate with a really good bit of dry aged beef. Maybe I have been spoilt by Meat Matters steaks, but the Argie stuff used here ain’t a patch on the MM offering and it makes me question the point of using beef from half way across the world (and the “We aim to be net zero” by 2040” guff – the term greenwashing sprung to mind for some unknown reason 🤔 –  I mean you could buy just local beef, rather then air freight it half way across the world, and plant a few trees and/or perhaps make the restaurants out of mud if you were really serious about it) when stuff from down the road is seemingly so much better.

The chimichurri sauce I had with it was OK if a bit too oily and could have done with more of a herbal and chilli hit.

I did enjoyed the chips (could have them or a tomato salad as part of lunch deal), which has a crisp exterior and fluffy exterior and were nicely seasoned. Decent portion size too.

Still think skin on fries are just an excuse to be lazy.

In terms of Rachel, I have over the years, tried to get her not to:

• order the fillet (😴); or
• request her steak be cremated.

Her husband favours a steak that has been left in the main engine exhaust for both launch and landing of a Space X Heavy Falcon (I maintain he may as well eat one of his shoes as it will taste the same) and I have been trying to get her back from the “Charcoal” side for a while.

To this end, I had some success with her ordering the sirloin medium rare

Again this didn’t have that external sear and the promised crackling beef fat cap was a rather flaccid affair.

It was also over by some margin, looking alarmingly like a bacon chop (lighting didn’t help)

which I think she was secretly pleased about (I still have work to do it seems). I suspect she only ordered it medium rare to stop me taking the pxss (as she refused to raise it as an issue – bet when she went to the ladies’ room she changed her order surreptitiously). She said it tasted fine, but was with me on the lack of a proper sear.

She ordered the bearnaise sauce, which lacked a bit of acidity and a lot of tarragon for my taste. I like a bearnaise to be very heavy on the tarragon.

We ordered desserts and to me these were the best part of the meal.

My dulce flan had a pleasing wobble and a good level of caramel sweetness. A crumb added a welcome bit of textural contrast.

Rachel’s chocolate volcano (a chocolate fondant) had the requisite ooze in the centre and a nice flavour.

Decent pistachio ice-cream too.

The booze

On the booze front, the wine list has an unsurprising focus on Argentine wine.

Fulsome it may be, but cheap it most certainly ain’t.

I had a cheeky glass of red as I wasn’t doing anything work wise that afternoon. It was their cheapest malbec (when in Rome and all) and was £10.25 for a 175ml glass.  Perfectly nice, but I have seen the wine in question retail for £11 a bottle so that is a pretty hefty mark up (but seemingly one of the lowest on the list).

Looking randomly at other prices on the  list, the Juan Gil Silver Label (a nice Spanish, monastrell, wine) is on their list at £66 and retails at £14.50. Further up the chain, price wise, the Vistabla Corte A is £140 on the list and retails at £38.65 and the Tiganello 2017 is on the list at an eyewatering £425 when it retails (prices for Tig. have gone mad of late) at £175 (I was picking up Tig. 2015 and 2016 vintages for around £65 not so long ago).

The Tiganello provides for an interesting comparison as against top end wine prices at what must be one of this place’s main rivals, Pasture.

Pasture has the Tig. 2019 (OK a different vintage, but I would argue a better one than the 2017 here) at £220.

It utterly mystified me as to how one place, within spitting distance of the other, can charge over £200 more for pretty much the same wine.

The verdict

The place is nice and the service was good,  but it was let down by the rather indifferent steaks and very pricey wine.

Perhaps the al a carte is better, but the lunch menu steaks were disappointing for a place where steaks are the main event.

For an oenophile like me, wine prices are a bit 😱 and corkage (at £35 a bottle) is one of the highest in the city.

Even though the corkage is high,  if you bought your own Vistabla Corte A 2017 you would save yourself nigh on £64 as against buying it off the list. If I bought my own Tiganello (purchased for £65) and paid the corkage, I would save myself £325! That just can’t be right can it!

The only saving grace is they do free corkage on a Monday.

In summary, should Asador 44 or Pasture be overly worried by this new market entrant? Other than perhaps in terms of Monday trade, I wouldn’t be losing any sleep if I were them.

The details

Address: 19 The Hayes, Cardiff , CF10 2EL (old All Saints unit) 

Website: https://gauchorestaurants.com/restaurants/cardiff/