THERE is this toff type over at the other side of the room. He is the sort who leads the firm's corporate cricket team, and who mimes the action of bowling, by the water cooler, for a screen break.
Right now he is shouting to make himself heard over his boisterous workmates.
“Shatt the fack app!” he bellows. And again for emphasis, “Shatt the fack app!”
He's not from around here.
Now some restaurants do moan about the lack of trade on week nights. The problem of luring punters who prefer to cuddle up to an M&S takeaway, a bottle of blush and Desperate Housewives/MadMen is as confounding as it is age-old.
In the Liverpool business district, restauateurs' cries can be even more plaintive as they watch all their custom trickle down into Moorfields station, come five o'clock, leaving the streets by the sea to whistle emptily, the clink of knives, forks and glasses stilled for another day.
So you have to have something special to get them back into the night.
Throw down some meat, then, and watch them gather.
Argentinian Meet, at the bottom of Brunswick Street , has been operating on this principle since it opened in 2006, and does a roaring trade. Like tonight, often literally.
For 10 years Argentinian Meet has packed them in and it's not just the customers who come from far and wide. All our beef is Argentinian, says the restaurant whose owners aren't. They are from Liverpool. The charming and efficient staff are South American and Hispanic.
On a wine list of perhaps 20-odd there are just three Argentinian reds to match with the meat, a shiraz, a cab sauvignon and the indigenous, food friendly Finca Flichman malbec (£18.50). Turns out this is on the lighter side of medium weight, but still quite dry. Was it worth the price tag? No.
Is it worth the £4.99 that you can get it for in Morrissons? Maybe. You can see why that Desperate Housewives DVD might look appealing.
And so to Chorizo a la Parilla (£5.50), grilled spicy sausage with salad. Salad comes with everything here and is from the same big barrel of colourful peppers, cucumber, onion and lettuce, uniformly chopped and tossed in a barely discernible dressing. You can't fault it on freshness.
Another thing that comes with everything is chimichurri, which sounds like something invented by a Irishman called Jimmy Curry who got lost in South America and whose name the locals had difficulty pronouncing.
Guess what? It's almost true.
This steak had been flayed alive by an angry hammer wielding individual so that it resembled Wily Coyote getting up after being run over by a truck
Chimichurri is made from finely chopped parsley, minced garlic, vegetable oil, white or red vinegar and red pepper flakes and is thick, like a chutney; the essential Argentinian accompaniment to steak. This was a “dip” and, like the vivid red sauce which the highly seasoned five pieces of dry chorizo came in, was memorable only for its appearance, ie, not looking much like chimichurri.
Coctel de Mer (£6.95) was a generous-er portion of tiger prawns with an avocado mousse and salsa criolla (creole sauce) which lacked many ingredients beyond tomato. The seafood had retained its juiciness and sweet, mellow flavour and had at least found a happy consumer in my friend.
He, lulled like everyone else by the promise of red meat, and lots of it, then ordered Lomo a la Gitana (£23.95), filet mignon, or a 10oz fillet steak, wrapped in bacon with a mushroom sauce.
What he got was two lumps of fillet steak, on a skewer, tomato on one side, and a thick bacon rasher on the other. All smothered in the mushroom gravy which made a big pool on the plate for the chips to swim in (more of them in a minute).
After a bit of a struggle, he complained that it was messy and that that, yes, the fillet had not much flavour.
If you do want flavour, order ribeye. Failing that sirloin, and if you are buying any of them to cook yourself, make sure it has a solid marbling of fat. Don't tell yourself that lean will do you less harm. You have already to elected to ingest a piece of solid flesh. Your coronary die has been cast and you must therefore relish every mouthful as if it were your last.
That's the rule, but rules are meant to be broken, and so it was with my own 8oz ribeye (£10.95). This had been flayed alive by an angry hammer wielding individual so that it resembled Wily Coyote getting up after being run over by a truck.
On the plus side, it was perfectly cooked to medium rare. Mushroom sauce in a big gravy boat was from the basic school and I'm not going to waste any more time talking about it.
Finally, they don't do refried beans in here, however they do do refried potatoes in the shape of chips, reminiscent of any works canteen, which tasted exactly as if they had met with several dunkings in fat that night.
Not good, but like that unruly, swearing yuppie earlier, they made the rest look great.
Speaking of whom, I wonder how hot the boiling oil in that chipper actually gets.
Rating: 11/20
Food 5/10
Service 3/5
Ambience: 3/5
