Do you think I’m skinny Max? “Yesh and mommy’s freckly and I’m just bug-bitey.”
Meat is not only abundant and inexpensive in Uruguay, if you know where to look it’s also tastier. Consider:
In the US most cows are kept on CAFOs where they’re fattened up in small pens with corn. In Uruguay they’re free-roaming and grass fed. Most of this meat gets sent out of the country but if you can get a hold of some meat that’s meant for export, the taste is unbelievable. Such meat can be found at La Otra en Enero, a restaurant in barrio Pocitos.
Last night at La Otra there was a gathering of several Americans, an Australian, a Serbian and several Uruguayans where we enjoyed some meat and talk.
8:20 – The first 3 or 4 of us arrive. You seat yourself.
8:40 – The waiter asks us what we’d like to start with.
9:00 – A few others arrive
9:10 – Appetizers/drinks arrive
10:00 – We order the main course (a.k.a. the slabs of meat cooked to perfection and thrown unceremoniously and without garnish on plain white plates)
11:30 – We ask for the check
11:40 – I’m the first to take off for home. What can I say, I’m not a party animal 
It’s interesting how La Otra has become more or less the de facto meat restaurant for foreigners. It seems like everyone has made the rounds and ended up settling on this one unassuming restaurant. It has the perfect mix of atmosphere (casual) with food (excellent) and price (also excellent–their most expensive steak is about 11 dollars.)
5 Comments
March 2, 2007 at 2:52 pm
nice picture!
March 2, 2007 at 2:54 pm
thanks… you took it
March 14, 2007 at 9:03 pm
Hi Marcus!
It is a nice picture of the parrilla… that’s what it must have looked like after all the meat we ate!
The restaurant is La Otra. “En Enero” is an advertising slogan reminding people that they were open during the “summer slowdown.”
The guys are getting together again Thursday night at about 8:30pm; we’d like to see you there!
April 6, 2007 at 4:58 am
Thanks for that link on CAFOs — it was stunning reading! I learned a lot.
April 27, 2007 at 9:33 pm
Hard to believe La Otra is 2 blocks from us, we eat there on average once a week and until this very minute, I couldn’t recall the name.
Thankyou for putting it in writing.. let’s see if that helps the memory next time..
Neither myself, my wife nor most of our friends, (many locals), believe there is a better meat Parilla in all of Montevideo. Perhaps that’s why it’s everyone’s favourite.