El-Vaquero

Angella

El Vaquero - The Cowboy 17th December 2008

1 found this helpful

The word Vaquero means the cowboy. So what will they serve?

Everything. You can see the huge horizontal skewers of meat rotating. The meat all arrives on huge skewers. Tall young men wearing black serve.

What with the echo and their accents it's a bit like United Nations while the interpreters are having a tea break. If you sit wedged against the wall the servers are the other side of the wide table and you have to ask the people sitting other side to translate.

Atmosphere
Very jolly. They had the tables all set up ready for us. Candles in small red holders. Amusing salt and pepper pots, one red, one black, designed to look like a couple clutching each other in a fond hug.

Convenient Ground Floor
I was told 'the food's fab' and they were right. Venue for our group's party. There is a bar by the door of the L-Shape room. A committee meeting had been held here and the members liked it so much they went back.

Menu
I looked up their menu on their website, el-vaquero.co.uk which plays music and has pages you turn by clicking on the folded back lower corner.

The restaurant serves meat from Argentina, sliced off huge skewers which they carry around. Or fish - if you order in advance. Meat or fish with salads buffet costs £19.95. The vegetarian option (the salads without the meat) is cheaper.

Starters
There's no waiting for food. Before we started ordering they put down a generously sized plate of hot chips.

Salads
Then we went up to the salad bar. We circled around a block of trays containing containing hard-boiled eggs, lettuce leaves, tomato and cucumber, sweetcorn, shredded carrot, aubergine, and Waldorf salad (celery apple, walnuts in mayonnaise - supposedly invented in the New York hotel of that name - see Wikipedia), plus dips and oils. Compared with the salad buffets which you get at pizza places and pubs I thought this one looked and tasted more interesting and appetising.

We sat down and after that It was definitely as much as you can eat. Servers kept coming round with more meat, lamb, chicken, sausages, pineapple.

The restaurant website shows the menu for food and drink. I'm a 'sweet' person. I had phoned up and asked if they did desserts. They do. Pancakes with lemon and sugar or Nutella, and chocolate brownie, and vanilla ice cream, or lemon sorbet, or mango sorbet. (Drinks and desserts cost extra.) The chocolate sauce is added in decorative lines. The sorbets were refreshing.

Drinks
According to the menu warm cocktails come with cinnamon sticks. Sounds like mulled wine - good for winter time.

We had the cold cocktails including Capirinha, which is a Brazilian favourite. Coloured green. (See wikipedia.) Generous wedges of lime or lemon.

They also do tequila. And Diablo which contains cassis and is coloured pink. Not as good as kir but okay. I suggest you browse the menu on line in advance in order to make up your mind on the night and not miss out on anything. Soft drinks include cola.

You can order a jug of sangria for about £20 which is about £5 each for four of you, the same as most of their cocktails. The drinks were not quite as sweet as I would have liked, and the fruit did not go into the sangria (like at La Giralda's, Pinner Green) but stayed in the jug. I was not overjoyed by the drinks but they were okay and a novelty. Everybody else seemed very happy, especially those who knew about South American drinks could show off their knowledge explaining to others.

Reading from the website, I saw that the double espresso was slightly cheaper than the capucchino. I thought the Nutella hot chocolate sounded irresistibly wicked.

Service
In the restaurant after a couple of hours eating the meats, servers did not bring back the menu for desserts and coffees.

Service was willing. Although we had trouble understanding the accents. Twice the servers went off to get a pencil half way through taking the orders and then started again. I never found out who was in charge.

I forgot to ask for the cinnamon tea I'd seen on the website. Others ordered mint tea which had real green mint leaves floating in a see-through glass. Servers did not seem to know that cinnamon tea was available. By the time one of them had found it was, I had already ordered double espresso from somebody else and been served, so I never got to try it.

A friend told me that you can get cinnamon tea in tea bags from Four Seasons. Maybe I'll hunt for that.

Another slightly smaller group of 8-10 people had tables in a big square which enabled them all to talk to everybody.

Our block of tables for about 12-14 people was arranged T shape. At the suggestion of a committee member we switched seats half way though the evening which is great for a big group. So you are not stuck with somebody you don't know and will never see again. You don't miss out on talking to good friends. You get to talk to somebody you might not otherwise have met.

Even if a couple of people don't want to move (they are with bags and coats, or a drink, or lazy, or like the person they are with) everybody else can move around. In fact, you only need to get everybody on one side to move up a seat or two and the people the other side can stay where they are and you get new faces, and can still shout across to people you met before. Or the people at each end can swap.

By the end of the evening everybody was full. We all thought the food was good quality and great value.

Their hours are Tuesday to Thursday 19-23 hrs. Friday 19-midnight. Saturday 19-00.30. Sunday 12.30-15.30 and 19.00-23.30.

Location
I was under the impression that they were near Mill Hill but nowhere near the Broadway. They are in Woodside Park. I looked up the route on AA route finder and printed off the route. But the Equestrian Centre is at the beginning of the road and the restaurant sign is small. The restaurant is not visible on the long road but down that private turning. The AA text directions tell you when you have reached the road but not which end of the road, nor that you have to turn into the entrance to the equestrian centre. A map is essential.

The AA estimated a long time considering the distance. Allow another half an hour for getting lost, sailing past the equestrian centre and driving back.

The website has photo of both their two venues - the other one in Golders Green - but we went there and it doesn't exist any more. This Woodside Park branch has the wooden walls. Highly recommended.