Gran Dabbang - Buenos Aires

Oh, No! Not another restaurant that gets rave reviews that isn’t worth a visit. I’m dumbfounded. I’m trying hard to think about a single positive thing to say about Gran Dabbang.

Just like our blistering of the hugely overrated Chan Chan, the world’s worst Peruvian restaurant, the only positive thing I can think of was that the waiter was friendly, albeit incompetent. At least Chan Chan was inexpensive.

The first thing I noticed was that they were serving food on tin plates. You know, the kind of tin plate on which you serve Ken-L-Ration to your pet Collie, Butch. But, what the heck. The best fish and chips I ever ate were served on the morning paper. And some the best barbecue in Texas is served on butcher paper with a side of ice tea in a paper cup. Unfortunately, the food was no better than the tin plates it was served on at Gran Dabbang.

The décor? Dingy paint on bare walls except for a few fifty-cent Bollywood movie posters. The plants were covered in dust. We were seated at a table that looked like something from a garage sale. The tables were packed in with no more than 15 inches between ours and the couple next to us (who were having a very interesting conversation that I could easily overhear). The décor was a disaster. Take a look at the photos. How about that classy façade out front?

My companion wanted coffee. No such luck. No coffee at Gran Dabbang. Who ever heard of a restaurant in Buenos Aires that doesn’t serve coffee? I suppose if it were some kind of health food restaurant that might make sense. But they were serving Heineken beer and cheap apple cider. Go figure!

The food? I ordered the Mbejú (a puffy little cake made with a mandioca dough, that is a common component of the Paraguayan diet). The GD version of the cake is made with smoked provolone. It wasn’t bad but it also was nothing worth getting excited about. I tasted the cheese. But where was the smoke?

I also ordered what I thought would be some succulent braised pork belly. What I got was a thick slice of bacon with some murky, bitter sauce accompanying it along with about three bites of some tart slaw.

Thinking a second apple cider might relieve the disappointment I was feeling I ordered one up. About 20 minutes later my companion, God bless her, waived down another waiter to get the cider I’d ordered.

And what did this half-baked meal cost? $110 pesos for the little cake and $120 pesos for my slice of bacon and three bites of slaw.

One burger at H Perez a few blocks away would have been more satisfying for a quarter of the cost.

Allie, over at PUTF, always clever with words, says Grab Dabbang is DaBomb. I’d say it’s more like DaBust.

This restaurant wouldn’t normally merit a review due to an overall rating below 3 stars. But because it has received so many favorable reviews online we’ve had to add it to our list of Most Overrated Restaurants in Buenos Aires and have provided the full uncensored details.