Zoilo

Think ‘Argentine restaurant’ and you’ll probably envision a smoke-wafting asado grill, all hulking slabs of grilled cow and gallons of malbec. You do get a little bit of that at Zoilo (via the Mendoza-heavy wine list) but this Marylebone spot is more classy, clattery café-bar than manly meat joint.

The food is more finicky too, with only a few recognisably rustic Argentinian staples. A skillet of melted provolone cheese was excellent (duh): slathered in oregano-laced honey and snaffled in the too-brief moment between blisteringly hot and totally congealed. A dinky, beef-stuffed empanada was a fine example of the ubiquitous street snack (a sort of superior pasty); the house chorizo – a flavourful warm sausage as opposed to the vividly paprika’d, hard-cured Spanish kind – with zesty chimichurri was merely good.

Later, a grilled flank steak was a well-cooked bit of beef, but didn’t quite live up to the charred, gutsy promise of being prefixed ‘asado’ (that is, cooked over fire). But the mushroom ravioli, made Argentinian with a malbec reduction, were yielding, earthy and doused in a fontina fonduta we couldn’t get enough of. To drink: more malbec. What else? Putting your dreams of smoke-heavy Patagonian parilla party aside, Zoilo’s undeniably got, er, chops.