There are quite a number of Brazilian grills around London yet not as many of Argentinian ones around. My last time was eating at Buen Ayre several years ago up in Broadway Market. I noticed around the back of Exmouth Market one quite close to where I live that I finally got around to eating at.

When you walk into the restaurant, you notice a slight smoke in the air. This comes from the magnificent Asador or fire pit where you can see a number of meats roasting. We dined there early on during the week so they probably are used to roasting many more meats. It’s definitely an impressive sight to see.

Upon ordering, we got served some nice soft bread. Instead of butter however, we got aioli to spread across the bread. I have no idea if this is a common thing or not, but it tasted pretty good.

We also ordered the mixed empanadas to start with. It’s a bit hard not to enough pastries filled with assorted mixtures.

Here’s the picture of the spinach empanada above. I think the Caprese one was my favourite out of the three that we had. The ham and cheese one tasted strangely like a mini calzone.

We decided to go with for the A La Cruz Tradiciona Parrilladas at a very reasonable cost of £21 per person without the sweet breads. It comes with a whole heap of meat. In fact, there was so much meat that it would have been much more than what I think I’d eat during an entire week. It arrived with boneless flank, pork sausages, black pudding, chistorra, lamb and some other beef cuts. So. Much. Meat. I walked out with a food coma. Fortunately it was all really tasty and well seasoned that it didn’t really need anything else to go with it.

Not anticipating the amount of meat, we also ordered a side of chips (super crisp, fluffy and covered with garlic and parsley) and a side salad of rocket and Parmesan for some greens. Service was okay although our tap water remained unfilled for quite some time and we waited for sometime to flag a staff for the bill (when there were only four tables seated).

Would I return? Yes if I was in dire need of a protein injection. Could I eat that much meat again? Not this year.

Name: A La Cruz
Found at: 42 Northampton Road, London, EC1R 0HU
Website: http://www.alacruz.com/