Cantina Villa Picante: Seafood in the Argentine Pampas
Updated: 2 days ago
We made plans to visit Lobos, specifically Laguna de Lobos. Lobos itself is a small farming town about two hours from Buenos Aires. I was planning on a quiet weekend of reading and doing nothing, maybe visiting the Perón museum. This is where Juan Domingo Perón was born, and his birthplace is now a museum. I ended up not reading a single page and being pleasantly surprised by a fantastic restaurant that is in the middle of where you would not expect one to be, especially one this good. The curious bit is that you cannot find Cantina Villa Picante in Lobos on Google Maps, even if you search for it by name.
I started posting stories of where I was and my original grill master, Max, saw the posts and reached out to me:
“Tell me you are eating at Villa Picante,” he wrote.
“What is that?” I asked.
He then shared more details and I begged him to help me get a reservation for that very evening. Max came through!
When we arrived at Lobos, it was still siesta time and the town seemed deserted. This is a traditional farming town, but it also looked like it was well off. That shouldn’t be a surprise since agriculture is one of the few efficient industries that Argentina enjoys. We went straight to Perón’s house, but it was closed for siesta. Seeing as all the shops were closed save for this coffee shop I found, we opted to pass the time over coffee and were kept company by a very friendly stray dog. There are dogs everywhere in Argentina.
Coffee and a cookie while we waited out siesta. 
Our very relaxed companion while we waited for Perón’s house to reopen.
By the time we headed out, the streets had exploded with people. We decided to walk back to the museum and take in the scenery and the atmosphere. We walked past a plaza that bloomed with children. I have never seen so many kids out and about without a care in the world. Their presence made the town feel safe and I don’t remember seeing a single police officer throughout the whole weekend.
The museum was very well kept and it was very small. We spent maybe 30 minutes there. We had just enough time to drive by the restaurant so I could find it more easily that evening, then return to our cabin for a short rest.
Cantina Villa Picante Behind an Ordinary Door
Cantina Villa Picante occupies what appears from the street to be an ordinary house in a quiet residential neighborhood at the edge of town. Max gave me the address, but even after driving past it, I couldn’t tell there was a restaurant there. However, once you cross the doorway, you step out of the Pampas and directly into a charming seaside restaurant.
From Sardinia to Lobos
What did you just walk into? One of the signs clearly states that if you are not there to eat fish, you have made a mistake, and kindly points to the exit.
All of this starts to make sense once you know something about Gonzalo and Andrea. They met as teenagers in Lobos and then spent years leaving and coming back. They traveled repeatedly to Sardinia and also spent time in Brazil and Thailand, working, eating, and absorbing everything they could from those places. Neither of them attended a formal culinary school. Gonzalo’s first restaurant experience was washing dishes in Sardinia, a position he insisted on because the plates coming back showed him what diners liked and what they left behind. He was thinking ahead. The dish pit was his culinary school.
Travel changes you if you allow it to. Gonzalo and Andrea returned to Lobos with flavors, techniques and ideas, and a desire to try them out. Their restaurant became the place where all those journeys met. The first dish explained this better than I could.
Travel, Folded into the Food
Once we were seated, Andrea took our drink orders while Gonzalo brought out and explained each dish. The first was a flaky pastry fried in pork fat, filled with shrimp and cheese, and drizzled with passion fruit sauce. You can trace the dish back to three places. Sardinia contributed seadas, a cheese-filled pastry served with honey. Brazil contributed the pastel, in this case filled with shrimp and cheese. The sweet-and-sour tropical sauce came from flavors they encountered in Thailand. You can just picture Gonzalo taking those memories and folding them into this one dish in Lobos, in the middle of the Argentine Pampas. Back in Buenos Aires, I’m still thinking about this dish. Fair warning, dear reader: my mouth is watering as I write this.
Gonzalo came out of the kitchen holding a glass plate with a gorgeous tuna carpaccio, bright red and dotted with little drops of Japanese mayonnaise, citrus zest, chili oil, and capers. Fabiana, my wife, doesn’t like eating anything cold, so this one was all mine. My only concern was whether this would fill me up too quickly. I went for it anyway. The tuna slices were thin and silky. Each slice seemed to melt in my mouth. Gonzalo waited a little longer before bringing the next plate because I was taking my time with this one. Who can blame me? I had the whole plate to myself, and I was savoring every slice.
A Seaside Cantina in the Pampas
When Gonzalo and Andrea weren’t traveling, they were busy making plans for their future by buying furniture, tableware, linens, and decorations for the restaurant they hoped to open one day. They love traveling, but they also love food and cooking. This obviously shows up on their plates, but also in how they decorate and maintain their restaurant. This place is kitschy, but it is also very well kept and clean.
In the main dining room, I spotted two figurines. One was Iemanjá, the Afro-Brazilian deity associated with Candomblé and Umbanda. She is regarded as the queen or mother of the sea and the protector of fishermen and sailors. Next to her stood the ubiquitous Gauchito Gil, Argentina’s cowboy folk saint, who is believed to protect the poor and vulnerable.
The walls were covered with colorful hand-painted seafood signs that resembled old market advertisements. Combined with the wide white boards, they made the room look like a seaside shack. We sat underneath one of the largest signs. The main room was bathed mostly in blue light, making it feel as though it was submerged.
Our table beneath the hand-painted seafood signs, bathed in blue light. We sat beneath this fish-cut diagram, one of the restaurant’s many hand-painted seafood signs. 
The blue-lit dining room gives way to the bright open kitchen, with Gonzalo moving between the two.
There was another room in the back, separated from the first by industrial metal shelving. That room had cement walls, bright white lighting, white linens, and a back wall covered by large racks of wine bottles. All of this stood in contrast to the kitchen, which was all white tile and stainless steel. It screamed efficiency and cleanliness, while the rest of the restaurant felt cozy.
A Cantina Villa Picante life preserver marks this unlikely port in the Pampas. Caption: The quieter back room traded blue light for concrete walls and rows of wine bottles.
The Rest of the Meal
The rest of the dishes kept coming out one by one, each one a marriage of flavors and love, bringing together ingredients from different parts of the world. Maybe on paper none of it should have made sense, but as soon as I tasted it, it made all the sense in the world.
Seafood rice with prawns and scallops. Red corvina tacos with cabbage, avocado, red onion, Japanese mayonnaise, parsley, and pickled pepper Pickled mussels with mussel mayonnaise, pickled onions, heirloom tomatoes, and parsley.
Even the final course surprised me, and it was one of Argentina’s most traditional desserts. Gonzalo brought out a panqueque, an Argentine crepe filled with dulce de leche and topped with sea salt. To be honest, I had never thought to put sea salt on a panqueque con dulce de leche, which is odd because I use that same sweet-and-salty approach with our own dessert at AsadoAdventure. I even put sea salt on my chocolate chip cookies when I bake at home.
The Restaurant Bourdain Would Have Loved
Something tells me that Anthony Bourdain would have loved this place. Cantina Villa Picante was born from Gonzalo and Andrea’s love of travel and all the experiences and flavors they picked up along the way. The food feels like their life together, served one plate at a time, while all the little knickknacks decorating the restaurant tell the rest of the story.
Eventually, Gonzalo decided that he wanted to stay in one place and cook. Andrea wanted to continue traveling. They came up with a compromise: they would open the restaurant, and if it failed, they would close it and return to traveling. Luckily for me, it succeeded, and I was able to enjoy one of the best seafood meals I have had in this country.
If you care enough about food to drive two hours into the Argentine Pampas for dinner, Cantina Villa Picante is worth the trip. The food is amazing, and the prices were more than reasonable. I am looking forward to going back, and I might just have to force some people to come with me. This is too good to keep to myself.
I never even opened my book.
Where to find Cantina Villa Picante
Comments