Buenos Aires Cafe - Good, Quick, and Inexpensive Dining Downtown
While spending the day in downtown Kralendijk yesterday to exhibit our art at Dia di Arte, our family found ourselves in need of lunch, and decided to try the brand new Buenos Aires Cafe, located at the seaward entrance of the Harborside Mall, across the way from Karel’s Beach Bar.
The Buenos Aires Cafe had opened the day before (on Saturday), and is owned and operated by the Palacios family - the same folks who run the Argentinian-oriented Patagonia Restaurant near Harbour Village. Even though it was only its second day of operation, the Cafe was fully operational, with a pretty lengthy breakfast and lunch/dinner menu. It should be noted that the Cafe is open 7 days a week as well.
The Cafe offers both on-site dining in an attractive wood covered patio - including table service, and also has take-away (which we opted for). There’s also a counter/bar area where food and beverages can be ordered and eaten.
In order to properly sample the variety of offerings at Buenos Aires Cafe, we ordered five dishes. Each order came with a heap of french fries and a petite green salad with iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumber, but without any dressing. We had wanted to try one of the several seafood dishes, but there was no fresh fish available - a common problem at a number of Bonaire dining establishments recently as the fishing around Bonaire has been spotty the last couple of weeks.
The first entree was a ham, cheese, and scrambled egg pita sandwich, offering a generous helping of all ingredients, and served with the cheese hot and melted, on a large and thick pita (NAF 9,00 / US$5.14). The Cafe offers a variety of pita sandwiches.
We also had the sirloin and ribeye combo plate (NAF 22,50 / US$12.85 - the most expensive dish we tried) - great ribeye, cooked medium. To mix things up we also had an order of chicken parmigiana (NAF 18,50 / US$10.57), featuring a very thick and large breaded chicken breast - very moist, with just a smattering of tomato and tomato sauce, and then covered in melted cheese.
The last two dishes featured one of the best features of the new cafe - rotisserie chicken. Until now, the only time you could get rotisserie regularly on Bonaire was Saturdays at a small butcher’s in Tera Kora, but now you can get it everyday of the week at Buenos Aires Cafe. One of the dishes featuring this great, juicy and flavorful chicken was the mixed grill, which had a piece of sirloin, a quarter of a chicken, and a chorizo sausage (NAF 16,50 / US$9.42). The whole rotisserie chicken entree (NAF 19,50 / US$11.14) featured, as one might imagine, a whole plump chicken, cooked perfectly. There’s also a half-chicken plate available.
The total for our five plate lunch, plus a raspberry smoothie, was NAF 102,80 (US$59.08). From the time the order was placed until it was ready was approximately 15 minutes. It was a good first tasting for us, and we plan on being back, many times. And yes, Buenos Aires Cafe accepts all major credit cards too. (Source: Bonaire Insider Reporter)
