Argentine Outlook

Sometimes getting a job isn’t just a question of “who you know.”

Kevin Sherry, former head chef at Las Posas Country Club in Camarillo and more recently at the Pierpont Inn in Ventura, didn’t call on his long list of restaurant contacts to find his latest place of employment.

Instead he followed the lead of the old-fashioned classified ads--and landed a job at the new Cafe Buenos Aires on State Street in Santa Barbara.

The 175-seat Argentine restaurant, a significantly larger version of the cafe of the same name previously located around the corner on Victoria Street, is scheduled to open today, with Sherry in front of the stove.

Sherry has spent much of the time since his hiring in May cramming for the big opening-day test--poring over cookbooks and dictionaries. Though his culinary background is extensive, his experience with South American cooking has been limited.

“I’ve been doing research for two months, reading and reading and reading,” Sherry said. “This is very exciting to me. Any time you get into a new area you know nothing about, it kind of gets the coals going again. I’ve been having a blast reading. I’ve been on the Internet.”

Sherry said his goal and that of Cafe Buenos Aires owners Wally and Silvia Ronchietto will be to offer diners a real taste of Latin American cuisine--samplings from Argentina, Spain, Cuba, Colombia, Brazil and the Caribbean.

“We’re not going to just use ingredients and make up our own concoctions,” Sherry said. “It’s going to be very traditional.”

The menu, an expanded version of the menu at the old restaurant, will include grilled pork loin marinated with sour oranges, garlic, coriander and mint, a dish common to Colombia; chicken with coconut, from Brazil; a Cuban version of arroz con pollo prepared with raisins, capers and olives.

And from Argentina, Cafe Buenos Aires will offer a variety of beef dishes along with more than a few other regional specialties.

“We would not be Argentine without empanadas,” Sherry said. “We wouldn’t even open without empanadas.” The restaurant will serve chicken, beef and corn versions of the stuffed pastry dishes.

Cafe Buenos Aires also will offer an authentic Argentine barbecue.

“What they do is serve the grilled meats--sweet bread, chorizo, skirt steak and tripa (small intestines) and Argentine short ribs--on a parrilla, which is like a miniature chafing dish, and it’s served with salads,” Sherry said. “It’s $12.95 and it comes with the whole assortment of meats.”

The restaurant will be open for lunch (from $6.95-$10.95 for a main course) and dinner (from $9.95-$19 per entree). There will be traditional Latin American music and dancing almost nightly.

Cafe Buenos Aires is at 1316 State St.

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Sherry was available to take the Cafe Buenos Aires job after he was replaced at the Pierpont Inn by Louis Ludwig, another chef who is quite familiar with Ventura County’s restaurant community. Actually, Ludwig is quite familiar with the Pierpont restaurant community, having served as head chef at the inn’s dining establishment for 2 1/2 years from 1993 to the end of 1995.

Ludwig left the Pierpont to help launch, as head chef, the Serrano Country Club in El Dorado Hills, east of Sacramento. His return to the Pierpont is a similar move, in that he will be helping design the new Mattie’s restaurant concept.

Early this year Pierpont executives announced plans to take their restaurant in a new direction--renaming it Mattie’s in memory of Pierpont matriarch Mattie Gleichmann who purchased the inn with her husband Gus in 1928. The inn is run by the Gleichmann’s descendants.

Along with the new name, plans call for a new approach to the food, a return to the cuisine of the restaurant’s past, with a 1990s flare.

Which is where Ludwig fits in and why Rod Houck, general manager of the Pierpont, tracked Ludwig down at the Serrano Country Club.

“Rod had come to visit me in Northern California and expressed a desire to bring me back as part of the team, to really use my talents to make Mattie’s happen in a big way,” Ludwig said. “My experience has always been to get big things, really special things, on track.”

Mattie’s is expected to open at the start of 1998--about six months behind its original schedule. Right now, Ludwig, Houck and others are mapping out the menu.

Ludwig described the planned cuisine as “California classic.”

“It’s going to be traditional California cuisine, circa 1930s, ‘40s and ‘50s, done with a little more modern presentation as far as being health oriented,” he said. “The picture is to appear traditional, but actually the content is going to be very fashionable.”

Ludwig said the menu also will include dishes that represent a bit of the local cultural heritage. “A little Spanish influence, a little bit of Oriental influence, possibly,” he said. “American regional cuisine and a lot of seafood.”