Dining in Mendoza –Francis Mallmann 1884

So as promised, this is my final restaurant review for the next little while. This blog is NOT intended to be a series of restaurant/winery reviews…but the fact that I’ve written about nothing else while in Mendoza pretty much sums up what I got up to while here. Seriously, there can be few places in the world better for the wandering oenophile-gourmet. Oh, Mendoza, how I will miss you. Next up: beer, mountains, lakes and volcanoes, chocolate, salsa (of the dancing variety), more wine…Bariloche and Chile, here I come!

But I digress. The purpose of this post is to attempt, somehow, to express the sublime gastronomic experience that is my hands-down favourite restaurant in, if not the world, certainly Argentina—and to do it without once using facile, vacuous phrases like “a feast for the senses.”

So important is the maestro behind 1884 that he incorporated his own name into the restaurant’s. To this day I’m not sure if it’s supposed to be 1884 with the name appended, the other way around (I have seen both), possessive (Mallmann’s?) or what.

It doesn’t matter. Although this shrine to food is located in a winery (Bodega Escorihuela; it also claims to have been the first in Argentina to do so), it is different from any of the places I’ve written about recently. First of all, its location is almost urban by comparison, located as it is in Mendoza’s nearby suburb of Godoy Cruz (once obviously also rural wine growing country). Stylish and classy, with a voluminous wine list (seriously, I think I pulled a muscle just trying to lift it), this is a place to arrive very early, if only to soak in the atmosphere by the bar.

Second, although it is in a winery, this place is all restaurant—despite being a joint venture with Nicolas Catena, one of Mendoza’s best-loved vintners, the winery plays a distant second fiddle to the style, art and food of Mallmann. French trained and internationally famous, Francis Mallmann is one of South America’s best-known chefs. A description of his accomplishments and impact on South American cuisine is beyond the scope of this humble blog, but suffice it to say that he marches to the beat of his own drum.

And many have fallen in step. Like all his restaurants, 1884’s menu “pays homage to regional cuisine,” with elements typical of Argentinean country cooking as well as nods to native traditions; his famous infiernillo, (lit. “little hell”) cooking style consisting of two fires with meat sandwiched in between has its roots in ancient Inca practices.

The menu, which changes every two weeks, showcases a gastronomic style Mallmann calls “classical rebellion.” In his own words: “I really don’t believe in harmony in cooking. I like to have fights in my mouth when I eat. I like the mix of cold and hot and crunchy and wet and acid and sweet. That makes you live and think when you eat.”