Name: La Rosario Heemstede Argentijns Grill Restaurant
Address: Raadhuisstraat 58, Heemstede, 2101 HH, NL
Telephone: 023 547 6633
Rating: 3.9

Netherlands

Heemstede

La Rosario Heemstede Argentijns Grill Restaurant

Cut from between the ribs of the beef forequarter, the entrecôte is the French name for a boneless rib steak, the same muscle an English butcher sells as rib-eye and an Argentine as bife ancho or ojo de bife. The word means between the ribs. It is a cut defined by its marbling: a central eye of longissimus muscle, a cap of spinalis along one edge and seams of fat between them that melt during cooking and keep the meat juicy where a leaner steak would dry out. In a French bistro it comes grilled or pan-seared with frites and a sauce, béarnaise, au poivre or a shallot and red-wine reduction, and the Café de Paris butter made famous by a Geneva restaurant in the 1940s has become a dish in its own right, entrecôte Café de Paris, served in slices with a second helping kept warm. Weight is usually 250 to 350 grams for one person.

A good entrecôte starts with a well-aged piece of beef, two to four weeks dry or wet aged, cut at least two and a half centimetres thick so the outside can brown before the centre overcooks. It is brought towards room temperature, dried, salted and put onto a very hot pan or grill without crowding; the first side is left alone until it releases, then turned, and butter, thyme and garlic are added to baste if it is pan-cooked. Three to four minutes a side gives saignant, around 50 to 52°C at the centre; à point, the French medium-rare, is 55 to 57°C. The steak rests for five minutes on a warm plate so the juices settle, and it is sliced across the grain if it is to be shared. The sauce is made in the same pan from the fond, or brought separately; it should sit beside the meat, not drown it.

Judge the cut first: look for a dark, even crust, visible marbling in the cross-section and a cap of spinalis that is soft and rendered, not chewy. The centre should be the colour that was ordered, with a gradient of no more than a few millimetres from crust to pink, which means the pan was hot and the steak rested. Mark down a grey band under the crust, a pale surface from a cool pan or a wet steak, gristle that could have been trimmed, a steak cut thin enough that it cannot be served rare, and a sauce so heavy that it hides the meat. Fries should be hot and crisp, and salt should be present on the steak itself. An entrecôte ordered saignant and served à point, or sliced before it rested so the juice has run across the plate, loses points regardless of how good the beef was.

Entrecôte

Argentine empanadas are hand-sized baked or fried pastries with a soft wheat dough folded over a savoury filling and sealed with a rope-like crimp called the repulgue, whose pattern tells you what is inside. The classic is carne, a filling of hand-cut or minced beef cooked with onion, cumin, paprika and sometimes hard-boiled egg, olive and raisin, and every province argues for its own version: Salta's are small, spicy, with potato and spring onion; Tucumán's use matambre cut by knife and are baked in a clay oven; Mendoza's add olive and more onion; and Córdoba's include a little sugar in the dough and sometimes in the filling. Beyond beef the standard menu runs to ham and cheese, chicken, humita of creamed corn, spinach, and the sweet quince or dulce de leche. They are the national snack and party food, ordered by the dozen from specialist shops, and the Tucumán festival each September crowns a champion.

The dough is flour, beef fat or lard, salt and warm water, kneaded briefly and rested, then rolled into discs of twelve to fifteen centimetres; most shops and home cooks now buy the discs ready-made, and the honest ones say so. The beef filling is cooked the day before so the fat sets: onion softened in plenty of fat, the beef added and cooked only until it loses its rawness, then cumin, sweet paprika, a little chilli, salt, and the hard-boiled egg and olive folded in once cool. A spoonful goes in the centre of each disc, the edges are moistened, folded over and crimped in a repulgue of a dozen or more folds that seals tightly so the fat does not leak. They are baked at about 220°C for fifteen to twenty minutes until golden, often brushed with egg, or fried in beef fat in the north-west; a good shop marks each flavour with a different crimp so they can be told apart on the tray.

Judge them in the hand first: the dough should be thin enough to show the filling's shape, golden and slightly flaky from the fat, with no cracks and no raw pale seam at the fold. Bite and the beef filling should be juicy enough to drip a little, which is the whole point of cooking it in fat, with the onion sweet and the cumin clear, the meat in pieces rather than a paste, and the egg and olive in proportion. Mark down a dry, crumbly filling, which means lean mince or overcooking, a thick bready crust, a greasy underside from a cool oven, a filling that is mostly onion, a repulgue that has burst and let the juice run out, and empanadas that have been reheated, which show as a tough, dull dough. A dozen should take two hands and no cutlery, and the carne should be judged before any other flavour.

Empanadas Argentinas

225 gr Argentinian steak. I asked medium cooked and it was correct. Nothing special, tastes well, it was missing the salt, for a 225gr I was expecting the tickness of the meat bigger.

On the side I got baked potatoes with cream and spicy rice. Potatoes was nice but rice wasn’t good.

Pretty standard starter fork this Argentinian restaurant. Deep fried served in two pieces and taste well. Served hot and I liked it but nothing special in this beef version.

La Rosario Heemstede Argentijns Grill Restaurant

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