Anchoita Restaurant Buenos Aires: A Night That Changed My Mind

Dan Perlman and I end up at the same table from time to time. We eat together, we disagree, we eat again. We landed on the same burger once — the best in the city, and we both knew it immediately. Anchoita restaurant Buenos Aires is not that kind of story.

He went. He sat. He left unimpressed and said so in print.

I went. I left wanting to go back.

Same restaurant, two different nights, two different meals, two different verdicts. What happened?

Getting In: The Walk-In Strategy That Actually Works

The first thing Dan and I agree on: the reservation system is theater.

The booking platform tells you the restaurant is fully booked through next year, no matter when you check. You can join a waitlist, and roughly two hours before service you may receive a WhatsApp message. A yes or a no. No explanation either way.

I understand why this bothers people. It bothered me, too, the first time I looked at it. It's also why it has taken me so long to visit this place. But we skipped the whole game and showed up at 7:15pm instead. In Buenos Aires that is basically brunch, so there was no one at the door yet. We rang the bell, eventually someone responded and we asked if there was any walk-in availability that night, and they said yes — leave your name and come back at 8.

So we walked.

It was already dark, and this part of Chacarita is changing fast. New places opening one after another, the kind of neighborhood that is still figuring out what it is becoming. We spotted a couple of spots worth noting for future visits. That is its own reward sometimes. I love walking.

We ended up at Las Rojas, a new place making Tucumán-style empanadas. If you have only eaten the Buenos Aires version, the Tucumán empanada is going to reset your expectations. In Tucumán, there are rules. Not suggestions — rules. The meat is matambre, cut by hand, never ground. No potato, no olives, no raisins, no improvisation. What you get instead is juice that comes from cooking the meat properly. And you finish it with lemon.

We had humita that day, though. Corn, soft, sweet — closer to a whisper than a punch. Piping hot out of the oven, and we had to wait before we could bite into it without burning ourselves. We split it down the middle because we had a dinner to protect. Even half was convincing.

We made it back to the door at five to eight.

Two lines had formed. One for reservations. One for walk-ins. A few other people had tried the same approach we did, but by then the walk-in slots were gone. We were in!

The Space: What "Serious Investment" Actually Looks Like

The door that is apparently booked through next year. We found another way in.

The door alone tells you something. Warm wood, raw concrete frame, a single light overhead. Someone spent real money here, and they spent it with a point of view.

The courtyard at Anchoita. The clay oven is already going before you get through the door.

The courtyard opens up on the left: plants climbing the wall, a clay oven already going, stacked firewood. The smoke smell hits you before you see the kitchen. Just before you step inside, there is a wicker basket on the ground with copies of Masanobu Fukuoka's La Revolución de Una Brizna de Paja in it. A sign next to it: take one if you want, take two, and if you want three, there is a bookstore to the right when you leave.

Take one if you want, take two, and if you want three, there is a bookstore to the right when you leave. The sign actually says that.

Fukuoka was a Japanese farmer-philosopher who spent his life arguing against the logic of industrial agriculture. His position, stripped down: the more you scale, the more you lose. The restaurant raises its own Charolais beef, sources fish from Patagonian waters, makes its own chocolate from Amazonian cacao. Someone here read the book. The basket is not decoration.

Piñeyro has put real infrastructure behind the idea. Eighteen hectares under production, plus farms raising pigs, chickens, and geese. Agreements with sustainable suppliers overseen by anthropologists. The Fukuoka books are a position statement.

Inside: high black ceilings, an open kitchen in the center with counter seating running all the way around it. The building was originally a siphon factory. That explains the bones of the place — the height, the industrial feel, the sense that function came before aesthetics and someone later decided to make both work at the same time.

The clay oven does a lot of work here. The fennel, the pizza, the bread — all of it passes through this kitchen.

To the right of the clay oven kitchen, a cheese station with a glass-fronted cabinet behind it, stacked floor to ceiling with aging wheels.

The cheese station at Anchoita. Argentine artisan cheese getting the treatment it deserves.

La Suerte, Lincoln. Floor to ceiling, properly aged, not an afterthought.

La Suerte, Lincoln. Argentine artisan cheese getting the treatment it deserves. We were seated in the far right corner, against the wall. To my right, the next table sat under a large portrait of Fukuoka — same face as the book, same white beard, looking about as bothered by the whole scene as you would expect from someone whose entire philosophy was about doing less.

The table next to ours. Fukuoka presiding over the room, looking unbothered.

The Menu: Argentina, Taken Seriously

The menu reads like an inventory of what Argentina actually produces. Most restaurants stop at beef. This one keeps going.

This is not a steakhouse that happens to have fish on the menu. The fish section is the point of the menu. River fish from the Río Paraná — pati, surubí. Deep-sea fish from Patagonia — chernia, merluza negra. Charolais beef from their own production. A vegetable section that reads like someone actually cares about what is growing outside.

River fish, deep-sea fish, beef from their own production, and a whole section of chuletones. This is not a short menu.

The server also told us upfront: all meat comes out jugoso or muy jugoso. Rare or medium-rare. Those are your choices. If you need it cooked further, this is the wrong place for that particular steak. We were tempted by the seafood anyway. I will have to come back for the steak.

Bread First

Brioche, breadsticks, sea salt, butter. We ate the whole thing and did not apologize for it.

A brioche bun, two breadsticks, sea salt, butter — all on a wooden board with carved recesses for the small dishes. The breadsticks had something in them, maybe pimentón, and the brioche had the right weight. Not airy, not heavy. You could feel it had been made with attention.

Dan called the bread excellent. He is right. We ate the whole thing.

Pizza de Calahorras: The Evening Makes Its Case

Pizza de calahorras. No anchovies, no apologies — just a sweet pepper doing exactly what it is supposed to do.

The calahorra is a sweet bell pepper grown mostly in Mendoza and Salta — fleshy, heart-shaped, more concentrated than the common morrón. More elegant, if that word applies to a pepper. At Anchoita they roast it into something jammy, lay it over wood-fired dough that comes out of that clay oven with good char and an open crumb, and finish it with fresh herbs.

No anchovies, despite what the name of the restaurant might make you wonder. They do have an anchovy pizza. This was not it. This was entirely sweet — pepper forward, simple, confident. The crust had the right spots from the heat.

Fabi was pulling slices before I finished my first sentence about what I was tasting.

Chernia: Handled the Right Way

Chernia 300g. A perfect sear, fresh herbs, lime on the side. The kitchen let the fish do the talking.

We split the chernia, 300 grams. Wreckfish, also called cherne — firm white flesh, deep-sea Argentine, not cheap and not common. Worth finding.

Here is where Dan and I separate most sharply. He ordered pejerrey, which is a different fish entirely — delicate, thin, full of bones, built for a different kind of preparation. He found it underseasoned and badly accompanied. His criticism was specific. I believe him.

What came to our slate board was different. Grill marks. Smoked paprika and fresh herbs across the top. Lime wedges on the side. Two small sauce pots. The fish held its texture, came apart cleanly, beautifully presented.

Dan also ate alone. That is worth saying clearly, because this kitchen is not cooking for one. The portions are calibrated for two or more. The pacing is built for a table that stays. When you are the only person at the table, you are eating a different meal from the same menu.

The Sides

Hinojos braseados — braised fennel with honey and almonds. The green sauce underneath kept the sweetness honest.

Fennel braised in the wood-fired oven with honey and almonds. Long cooking takes the anise out of fennel and leaves something sweeter and softer, almost caramelized from the inside. The honey pushed that further. The almonds gave it texture and a slight bitterness. There was a herbal green sauce underneath that kept the sweetness honest.

Cebolla frita with romesco, pistachios, and criolla. Lacquered, dark at the edges, and more interesting than any onion has a right to be.

The fried onion with romesco, pistachios, and criolla: lacquered, dark at the edges, laid over sauce with the bright acid of the criolla running underneath.

The Wine: My Choice, Not Theirs

Cadus Appellation Tunuyán Pinot Noir 2023. The sommelier offered to choose. I said no. I wanted this one.

The sommelier offered to handle the wine. I said no. The Cadus Appellation Pinot Noir from Tunuyán, Valle de Uco had already caught my eye, and I was confident it would work across everything we had ordered.

Cadus takes its name from the Latin word for the amphoras that held special, limited batches of wine in ancient Rome. The philosophy is small lots, focused on terroir, built around specific appellations. Tunuyán sits at 1,400 meters in the Valle de Uco, a region with later harvests and more rainfall than most of Mendoza — the kind of conditions that give Pinot Noir enough freshness to stay interesting through a full meal. The 2023 drinks with deep cherry color, red fruit, herbs, and a smooth finish.

With the chernia, with the fennel, with the sweetness of the calahorras still somewhere in the background — it worked. Every time.

Dan handed the choice to the sommelier and felt the pairing missed. I believe that too. Knowing what is on the plate changes the selection.

Service: They Got It Right

Dan, alone at a table designed for sharing, felt constantly monitored. Someone checking in every thirty seconds reads very differently when there is no one across from you.

For us: attentive without being present. Glasses filled before we noticed. Plates paced well. Nobody interrupted a sentence. The water situation alone — handled all night, my refill once — suggests a staff that is paying attention without making you feel watched. That balance is genuinely hard. They had it.

Dessert, and Then the Cubanitos

Tarta invertida de ciruelas. Sweet, tart, and the kitchen knew exactly where to stop with the sugar.

The plums concentrated, the caramel underneath picked up a slight bitterness. A good fruit dessert a

The tarta invertida de ciruelas: sweet, tart, the plums concentrated and slightly bitter underneath from the caramel. A pink cracker on the side for texture. The kitchen knew where to stop with the sugar.

Then they brought two cubanitos with the check.

Freshly made cubanitos with dulce de leche. The wafer cracked instead of bending.

You know cubanitos. Rolled wafer cookies with dulce de leche, packaged in every kiosk in the country, carried in every school bag at some point in Argentine childhood. Not something you get excited about. Anchoita makes them fresh, and that single decision — to make fresh what everyone else buys pre-made — communicates the whole restaurant. The wafer cracked instead of bending. The dulce de leche was thick and not too sweet. Ordinary, done right. Which is the hardest thing to pull off, and the thing this kitchen keeps pulling off all night.

The Bill

$123,000 pesos for two, with a full bottle of wine. What you order and who you bring shape the experience more than the price does.

Pizza de Calahorras — $15,000. Chernia 300g — $24,000. Hinojos braseados — $13,500. Cebolla entera — $12,000. Cadus Appellation Pinot Noir 2023 — $41,500. Tarta invertida de ciruelas — $17,000. Two people. Total: $123,000 pesos before tip.

Dan paid 90,000 alone and felt it was not worth half. Our bill was higher, for more food and a full bottle of wine, and felt like more than a fair trade. What you order and who you bring shape the experience more than the price does.

The Verdict on Anchoita Restaurant Buenos Aires

Dan said over-hyped. I understand why. Solo at a table for sharing, a fish that didn't work out, wine chosen by someone else, reservation theater that set the wrong tone before the first bite. Those are real variables, and not just excuses.

My verdict: properly hyped, if you go about it right. Arrive early, skip the waitlist game, bring someone, order to share, and trust your own instincts on the wine list. The philosophy behind the room is coherent — you can see it in the sourcing, in the Fukuoka books, in the cheese cabinet, in the fact that they make their own cubanitos from scratch. The kitchen follows through on it.

Is it expensive? Yes. Is it worth the door strategy? Also yes.

Those cubanitos said so.

If you do not get a table, they run two neighboring spots worth knowing: Anchoíta Cava for wine and tapas, and the Panadería de Anchoíta one block over. Not a bad consolation prize. Or walk over to the empanada place and have some authentic and delicious empanadas. Another great suggestion is that on the same block as the panaderia, there is a wonderful Philipino restaurant called Apu Nena.

Anchoita Juan Ramírez de Velasco 1520, Chacarita, Buenos Aires Walk-in strategy: arrive at 7:15pm, ask at the door, come back at 8pm.

Want to eat through Buenos Aires with someone who has opinions about all of it? The Palermo food tour covers the neighborhood's best bites with the context that makes food taste better. And if you want to understand what an asado actually means to the people who grew up around one, the at-home asado experience is the real thing.