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The Southern Cone · Volume 25, The Río de la Plata Table

Chivito

Punta del Este

Chivito, a towering steak, ham, cheese, bacon and egg sandwich: a tall toasted roll stacked with a thin seared sirloin steak, crisped bacon, folded ham, melted cheese and a fried egg with a soft.

Illustration

Time
About 55 minutes to 2 hours 15Our estimate, from comparable dishes.

Multiple Uruguayan and Argentine outlets converge on 1944, not the 1946 given by at least one otherwise respectable outlet, and both dates are named. At the bar and restaurant El Mejillón in Punta del Este, opened 25 January 1944 by the Italian immigrant brothers Donato and Antonio Carbonaro, an Argentine tourist arrived asking for chivito, young goat meat, which the kitchen did not have. Antonio, nicknamed Chiquito, improvised with a toasted bread roll, butter, a thin cut of sirloin and a slice of tinned ham, naming the result chivito in cheeky reference to what she had actually asked for; no goat meat has ever been involved. At its peak El Mejillón reportedly sold 1,000 to 1,500 of them a day. A distinct later dish, the chivito canadiense, was invented separately in Montevideo in January 1951 by the Galician immigrant Abelardo González at Bar Sirocco, adding Canadian bacon, and should not be conflated with the Punta del Este original.

As tradition built it

Makes 1.

Ingredients

The tradition's method, with the ingredients named. Quantities follow as we verify them.

The meat

  • 150g beef loin steak (churrasco de lomo)
  • to taste salt and pepper
  • cooked ham
  • mozzarella
  • smoked bacon, in strips

The sandwich

To serve

  • to serve chips

Method

  1. Put the steak between two sheets and beat it with a mallet until quite thin.
  2. Make little bundles of ham and mozzarella.
  3. Brown the bacon on a hot plancha. Boil the egg hard.
  4. Stir the garlic and parsley into the mayonnaise.
  5. Toast the cut face of the roll on the hot plancha.
  6. Cook the steak on the same plancha and season it. While it cooks, set the ham and cheese on top so the cheese melts, and lay the bacon over.
  7. Spread the roll with the mayonnaise and build it with tomato, lettuce, egg and onion. Lift the meat on with its ham, cheese and bacon, close it, and serve with chips.

Notes

The recipe is Federico González Talvi's, for El Observador in Montevideo, which weighs only the steak. Dani Sandi's in ABC Color, from Paraguay, gives a slice each of ham, mozzarella and bacon, an egg fried or boiled, two lettuce leaves and two slices of tomato, melts the cheese on the open bun in the oven, and adds pickled pepper and gherkin.

What a modern chef changes

The loin's doneness controlled precisely, and the layers built to hold their heat and texture rather than collapsing

Rung 2

Method

  1. Sous vide the beef loin to a precise medium at 56°C for 45 minutes, then finish with a very fast, very hot sear just before assembly, giving an evenly cooked slice edge to edge rather than the grey band a quick pan-fry alone produces.
  2. Render the bacon slowly first and use a little of its fat to finish the beef sear, tying the two proteins together with the same fat rather than cooking them in isolation.
  3. Build the sandwich in an order that keeps the bread from softening: a thin layer of cheese directly against the toasted roll first, so its fat forms a light barrier before the wetter tomato and mayonnaise go on, keeping the base genuinely crisp through the whole sandwich rather than only at the first bite.
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