The Southern Cone · Volume 25, The Río de la Plata Table
Chivito
Punta del Este
Illustration
- Time
- 30 minutes
- Researched
- Researched from 179 sources in the brief
Multiple Uruguayan and Argentine outlets converge on 1944, not the 1946 given by at least one otherwise respectable outlet, and this chapter names both dates rather than silently choosing one. 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
Serves 4. About 30 minutes.
Ingredients
- 4 crusty rolls (pan francés or catalán)
- a little butter
- 500g beef loin (lomo), sliced roughly 0.5cm thick
- 8 slices bacon or panceta
- 4 fried or hard-boiled eggs
- 200g cooked ham, sliced
- 200g mozzarella, sliced
- to taste tomato, lettuce, onion, mayonnaise
- to serve chips and Russian salad, to serve
Method
- Toast and lightly butter the rolls.
- Fry the bacon until crisp, then the beef loin, briefly, over high heat.
- Fry the eggs.
- Layer the roll: beef, bacon, ham, cheese, egg, tomato, lettuce, onion, finished with mayonnaise.
- Serve immediately with chips and Russian salad on the side.
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
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.