Check Your Bolas at the Door

Serendipity determined where we dined last Friday. The valet attendant at Ruth’s Chris Steak House opened Lee’s door and announced, somewhat sheepishly, that there was an hour and a half wait at the restaurant just as a 20-year-old song from an old Steely Dan album, “Gaucho,” came on the radio:

“Who is the gaucho, amigo? Why is he standing in your spangled leather poncho with the studs that match your eyes? Bodacious cowboys such as your friend will never be welcome here.”

Lee laughed as the young attendant stood holding her door, waiting for her to get out. “I haven’t heard that song in ages,” she said. “I’d forgotten how good it is.” We stepped out of the car, I handed the boy our keys while Lee continued humming the song, and--at the exact same moment--we saw the restaurant across the street: The Gaucho Grill. How could we not go? We left the car in the lot of one steakhouse and crossed the street to another.

There was neither a wait at the Gaucho Grill nor (much to Lee’s disappointment) bodacious cowboys in spangled leather ponchos. There was, instead, a heady smell of garlic and grilled meat. Argentines, like Brits, aren’t exactly known for their cuisine. They borrow heavily from the Italians who settled there. In Buenos Aires, you’ll find any number of neighborhood restaurants serving ravioli stuffed with traditional Argentine sausages like morcilla, a spicy dark blood sausage, or calzone-like pastries called empanadas.

But when Argentines aren’t eating pasta or empanadas, they like to tuck into a chunk of grilled meat--asado. Skirt steaks, rib eyes, sweetbreads; it makes no difference, just as long as it’s flavorful and plentiful.

“Among all their customs and rituals, none is more eagerly celebrated than the daily barbecues,” says a note on the bottom of the Gaucho Grill menu in explaining the cowboys of the pampas. “As the sun goes down, huge wood fires are started. Red hot coals are gathered and thrown into sand pits and covered with a wire rack. Meat cuts of all kinds sizzle on the grill in a seemingly endless feast.”

Even Lee, who almost never eats red meat, was enticed by this poetic picture. “It makes me want to wear black boots and wide pants tied up at the waist by a coin belt,” she said as we ordered two glasses of sangria and ripped off chunks of thick bread to dip in the clear bowl of chimichurri our waitress had put in front of us. This dipping sauce, a blend of olive oil and chopped parsley, garlic and oregano, tastes as grassy as the pampas.

There were a number of enticing salads on the menu as well as almost a dozen chicken or fish dishes, which normally are Lee’s first choice, but there was something about the heady barbecue smells wafting over the dining room that made us settle on steaks.

“I want the bife al ajo,” Lee said in her best gaucho accent. Mary, our waitress, explained that she was relatively new here, so she had Lee point on the menu to the item she’d just ordered.

“Oh, you mean the rib eye steak with roasted garlic,” she said.

“Hmmmm,” said Lee, frowning as if Mary had just asked her to leave her bolas by the door. “If they are going to call this the Gaucho Grill and serve bife al ajo, then why on earth don’t they do more to carry the theme out,” Lee said after the waitress had left our table.

“What would you suggest?” I said. “Do you think Mary should wear a flat-brimmed black hat and a wool poncho?”

“Why not?” Lee said. She sipped her sangria. “If you went into a Texas barbecue restaurant you’d expect wagon wheels on the walls and ‘Rawhide’ playing in the background, wouldn’t you?”

“God, I hope not,” I said.

Lee sniffed. “Well I would. And if the waitress wasn’t wearing Lee jeans and scuffed up cowboy boots, why I’d just turn around and walk out.”

“So what are you suggesting?”

“Just a little atmosphere,” she said. “Pictures of the pampas on the walls. Perhaps a little gaucho music.”

Just then Mary arrived with our steaks. “Can I get you two anything else?”

“Yes,” I said. “Two more glasses of sangria, a bit more of the chimichurri and some gaucho music.”

“Excuse me?”

“Gaucho music.” I pointed my steak knife at Lee. “She wants to hear some gaucho music.”

This request threw Mary for a loop. She went away and consulted with her manager who came over to our table a few minutes later and apologized to us for not having any gaucho music. “I’m not even sure what it sounds like,” she admitted.

I told her we didn’t either.

The rib eyes were fine and, at about 13 bucks each, about half the price of what we would have paid at the steakhouse across the street. When I handed the valet at Ruth’s our parking ticket, he asked us how our meal was.

“Very nice,” I said, “though we think the waitresses ought to wear blousy pants with coin belts.”

The valet looked confused. Lee just shook her head in disgust at me. On the way home, I sang the Steely Dan tune, which I had not been able to get out of my head.

“I’m sick of that song,” Lee said.

We were silent for a few minutes. And then both of us, at almost the exact same instance, began singing “Rawhide.” And for the rest of the ride home, we were rollin’, rollin’, rollin’.

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David Lansing’s column is published on Fridays in Orange County Calendar. His e-mail address is occalendar@latimes.com.