When you're walking up the sidewalk to Tierra del Fuego in Sugar Land Town Square, the first thing that hits you is the smell of roasting meat. Most of that smoky scent wafts from a glass-encased rotisserie at the front of the restaurant, where big hunks of outside skirt steak and slabs of ribs are sizzling and popping over the fire. It's not just cooking -- it's theater.
Tierra del Fuego is an Argentinean restaurant that wants to entice diners with its beef-centric menu and, once they're inside, seduce them completely with its sexy, dark dining environment. Down the aisles and between the tables, sleek tango dancers execute their intricate, silky moves unobtrusively across the floor. In the open kitchen, flames do their own dance across the grills and make the meat sizzle and pop.
It almost works. It's easy to join in the dance and order the parrillada gaucha, a meat-fest "for two" that includes sweetbreads, short ribs, Argentine sausage, blood sausage, chicken and bife de fuego (outside skirt steak). Then the platter arrives and the mistake becomes obvious. It's about five pounds of meat, most of which doesn't have much seasoning.
That's far too much for two people, unless they're high school linebackers.
The serving strategy is flawed, too. A wooden cart is wheeled to the table and the server brings out a big metal tray of meat. Underneath is a container of coals that keeps the platter so hot that the meat doesn't just stay warm, it continues to cook. While the diners are picking individual items off the platter, the rest is getting overdone.
The sweetbreads, which are pounded into strips, battered and fried, need just a touch of salt to bring them to life. The sausages on the tray are good, too. The blood sausage, known as morcilla, is a beautiful burgundy color, creamy and a bit fatty, and is seasoned with a touch of allspice. The Argentine sausage is chunky and porky and has the right touch of salt. Regrettably, these are the best meats on the platter, and the sausages aren't even made in-house, so Tierra can't take much credit for them.
The chicken had the misfortune of being at the bottom center of the platter and ended up overcooked. The crosscut short ribs were bony and dry as soon as they arrived, and there was nary a bit of salt on the outside skirt steak.
Strictly speaking, the parrillada gaucha is a tremendous value. It's $52 and comes with two sides. All that meat, though, is simply way too much for two people, who might find they're going home with a huge box of underseasoned, overcooked leftovers and a belly full of self-loathing.
Even Argentines don't eat like this anymore. Beef consumption there has fallen. A 2013 New York Times article says that at its high point, in 1956, 222 pounds of beef were consumed by each resident of that country on average. By 2011, the average had dropped to 121 pounds per person. Few respect beef as part of their heritage more than Argentines and Brazilians do (except perhaps Texans), but even they now seek a varied diet that includes more vegetables and pork.
When Brazilian steakhouse Fogo de Chão opened in Houston in 2000, it made a lot of sense. Texas has its own love affair with beef, and the thought of eating it until you just couldn't take any more seemed luxurious and decadent. These days, that seems excessive and artery-clogging. Dining has come a long way since then.
There's the option of individual steaks, of course. Rib eyes tend to be the juiciest because they have more fat. This seemed like the best opportunity for Tierra del Fuego to prove it could make a flavorful steak. The meat was cooked perfectly to the requested medium rare, but sadly also proved that the underseasoning issue is consistent. Is there a ban on salt in Sugar Land?
For a weekday lunch, the zapallitos rellenos, or baked, stuffed zucchini, sounded like an interesting, vegetable-centric starter. Unfortunately, they turned out to be no more interesting than the stuffed green bell peppers you might see at a church potluck. The ground beef filling had a dose of green bell pepper in it, so it even tasted similar.
The most interesting part of the dish is the delivery mechanism. Very large zucchini ends are hollowed out and a thin slice is taken off the bottoms to ensure that they stay upright on the plate. They're topped with pomodoro sauce (a basic Italian tomato sauce) and melted Provolone. If the filling had been more interesting, the dish could have been a winner.
