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Please note, Garufa has now closed. Time Out Food editors, March 2018
With leafy Highbury Park just down the road, and warm, unfussy decor – plain wood furniture and floor, rugged brick – the stage is set for simple, fruits-of-the-pampas pleasures. Which was what we got. The kitchen is separated from the dining room by a theatre-style red velvet curtain, and the food did its best to put on a show.
Some non-Argentinian starters were available for a while – a quinoa salad, for instance, and tamales de pollo – but lack of interest saw them removed. It’s hard to imagine them competing with the sweetbreads, in any case: these little chunks, served with a tiny morcilla croquette and dressed rocket, were excellent.
The parrillada mixta was, well, mixed. The flavour of two steaks – one a lean rump, the other a more tangled, sinewy ribeye – was just about up to Argentinian standards. But a piece of pork, although tasty, looked terrible – curled at the edge like something you’d get with two veg at a greasy spoon. It sounds like damning with faint praise, but the chips were the stars here: they seemed to have been subjected to multiple fries, and were all the better for it.