iLatina

Review by: Ollie O
Rating: 4.3 stars
Review Date: 03/17/2017

iLatina’s formative years were spent under the guise of being a “puerta cerrada”, the South American equivalent of an underground restaurant or supper club. This little incognito restaurant had to come out of the closet after more than three years of sitting at the top of the list of the most popular restaurants in Buenos Aires on the consumer review sites.

Colombian-born chef, Santiago Macías, after a stint in Patagonia, moved to Buenos Aires, and partnered with his brother to open iLatina.

The restaurant has no a la carte menu. Just an eight-course tasting menu full of interesting Latin American cuisine. It’s not just Colombian. The roots of this menu spread far and wide across every part the Americas that speaks Spanish, and through a few that speak Portuguese and French too.

There are breads made with yuca flour that are a mainstay of the cuisines of Colombia, Venezuela and Brazil. There are Panamanian yuca-dough empanadas (called carimañolas) and Peruvian ceviche. And then there’s a Mexican quail mole and an Ecuadorian fish dish cooked in a luscious coconut sauce. This menu has more stops than a South American cruise ship. The whole ordeal culminates in a ritualistic Colombian coffee display.

The waiters and waitresses are efficient. Ours spoke fluent English. The restaurant has a high energy level and the décor is lively and colorful. Bold works of art depicting indigenous Latin American women adorn the walls and the restaurant is dimly lit with candles twinkling away on every table.

The content of the tasting menu is clearly posted on the website and any questions about the menu or restaurant policies, including the price of the menu and wine pairings, are posted in a Q&A section of the website. Although there’s no online booking system, making a reservation was relatively simple. You can do that by phone, email or using an online request form. The restaurant typically responds to reservation requests with a few hours.

At the time we published this review, the cost of the tasting menu was about US$95 (ARS$1,800). With wine, paired with seven courses, costs an additional US$50 (ARS$900). That’s pricey, but most of the patrons at iLatina are visiting the city from abroad and wouldn’t blink an eye at those menu prices.

iLatina has raised indigenous cuisines to gourmet status and they’re enabling both foreigners and locals to experience some interesting and unfamiliar dishes from neighboring Latin American countries. This restaurant is reminiscent of popular Colombian female chef, Leo Espinoza’s restaurant, Leo, in Bogotá, and the recently inaugurated restaurant, Peumayén Ancestral Food, in neighboring Santiago de Chile, both of which pay homage to the cuisine of aboriginal inhabitants of South America.

Simply stated, this was a great experience. Both enlightening and delicious.