Barra Ñ — Restaurant in West Chicago Township

cute spot with some nice potential vibes. we stopped by early on a saturday for a quick-ish dinner. i’m pretty big fan of tango sur and the convenience shop attached to it (i get ~50 empanadas for my bday party each year) and tango sur has excellent ambience and desserts.

this place however was a bit off the mark for me: i was excited to eat the milanesa (my fav argentine dish) after having some excellent ones in buenos aires last october. sadly it wasn’t as good as i was expecting or that i’ve had before. also had to ask for lemon which seems pretty standard when ordering milanesa usually. too much chimichurri sauce for everything. the sad little salad (a chopped tomato with a few leaves of lettuce) didn’t add up to the $25 dollar milanesa. (it’s basically a breaded half of a chicken breast).

the cocktails were just okay, also had to ask for one of the missing ingredients (i saw them open a new can of cherries once i asked, seems like they just didn’t want to bother the first time around).

they also didn’t have a bunch of the empanadas (the sweet beef and the corn ones are the best ones they make and were missing from the menu but available on the other menu we had). and they also didn’t have the inka cola or other colas (also available on the menu). thought this was odd considering they had just opened for the day.

the dessert which i always love at tango sur, was good but the flan was a bit discombobulated when i got it, but generally tasted fine. the one at barra ñ randomly has strawberry syrup and powdered sugar (unnecessary), which is different than the one i typically get at tango sur.

i’d love to say i’d come back, but the pricing is just a little out of control for the food provided.

and although i LOVE bad bunny, i think the blasting of the music inside the small restaurant at 5:45p is a little ridiculous. made it harder to have a convo...

First off, I would like to say that we have been here several times and the food is always delicious! 5 stars for food. However, we dined in last night, and the bartender left such a horrible sour taste that I wouldn’t go back if he was working. Being in the industry, trust me I know when you’re busy, but there must have been no more than 5 tables. Our server did the best she could, but our cocktails must have taken more than 20 minutes. So we closed out and moved to the bar. As soon as we sat down, Danny, the bartender said “I’m busy!” As a bartender myself, when I am slammed or “busy” I don’t tell the customer that. I greet them and say I’ll be with you in a few minutes. We wanted to take a picture of the cocktails, and he immediately said “Can you please not.” We didn’t even want him in our picture (Ha) we just wanted to post on Instagram. Anyways, we got our cocktails and we couldn’t even enjoy them. We asked to close out and he once again, with an attitude said, “I’ll close you out when I get a chance.” Coming from a very high volume bar, trust me when I say it was not busy. He must have had a very bad day or completely hates his job. The drinks were great, but it didn’t need to come with an attitude as a garnish. Danny, next time take a shot or something. At this point, I rather go to Tango Sur and take my own...

This restaurant is in the middle of nowhere. It's very hidden...we drove right past it on Elston. The sign is not easily visible. The nice thing is there's plenty of street parking available.

This place is really small. There's only about 4-5 tables in the front room with a bar and in the back room, another 4-5 tables. It's super dark in there so it's difficult to read the menu. Since it's a steakhouse, there isn't much non-meat selections but I was happy to see that they had gnocchi on the menu. The empanadas are a MUST-try. It's probably the most popular item on the menu. Each order comes with 5 empanadas for just $10 total. Each empananda has a different filling. There were cheese-spinach, beef, pork, chicken, and potato...all very delicious.

The gnocchi was mediocre. The entree wasn't very large either and for $12 bucks, I thought it was on the high end considering there was nothing else in the dish besides potato dumplings in sauce. The gnocchi did come with a tomato salad. I am not into tomatoes much but I was very surprised, this salad was amazing! I ate every piece of tomato. It was seasoned very well.

The service was good too. She checked in on us every so often making sure we were good on drinks and food.

So in overall, good music, great food, good service.

P.S. They have a...