Photography by Kevin A. Roberts
Oscar and Ainara Farina
An abridged version of this article appeared in the September 2021 issue of St. Louis Magazine, under the title "It's all Bueno."
After spending time in the U.S. military, Oscar and Ainara Farina parlayed a food truck selling Argentinian street food into a restaurant in the Metro East and then another—Gauchos Argentinian Steakhouse. Hoping to introduce St. Louisans to Argentinian food and play off the food truck’s success, the couple rolled out Buenos Aires Café last month in the new Food Hall at City Foundry STL, where the signature items are skirt steak sandwiches and empanadas.
Can you share about growing up overseas and how you met?
OF: I grew up in La Pampa [in Argentina] and was raised by my grandparents, who owned a farm, butcher shop, and bakery. My grandfather was a master baker who made everything by hand. One kilo of dough made four loaves of bread and he could divide it perfectly. He didn’t need—and never used—a scale. By the time I was 15, I was good enough to become a maestro de pala, meaning “shovel master,” the person who loaded bread dough into huge woodburning ovens with a long paddle, which was a profession in Argentina. The proofing room had coal along the sides, and we’d have to wet the walls with water, so the dough would rise properly. My grandfather would come get me when it was time to bake—sometimes at two in the morning—because you never knew when the dough would get fully proofed. One guy’s job was to crawl in and clean the soot off the oven walls and ceiling. On the day he was coming, we’d let the oven get cool enough for him to get in there. He had a rope tied to him so we could pull him out if he got in trouble.
AF: I was born in Spain, but my dad was in the military, so we moved around a bit, eventually ending up in Miami when I was 6. Oscar and I met playing soccer in high school, which was good, because he had told his friends he didn’t want a girlfriend who didn’t like soccer. I thought he was shy, but that was because he didn’t speak English at the time. He would walk home from school and my Cuban friend would try talk to him in English but he never responded. When she finally spoke to him in Spanish, the floodgates opened. He and I met in the bleachers; he ended up giving me a kiss, and I remember thinking, I’m never going to wipe that cheek. When we both got old enough—18—we joined the Army.
Tell me about your time in the military.
AF: I started in the Army but transitioned to the Coast Guard, where I’m still on active duty, first in St. Louis and now in Chicago, mostly doing recruiting.
OF: She’s on duty right now. If she gets a call right now, she’ll have to go, like a firefighter or a cop.
AF: I’m usually able to come back to St. Louis on weekends, but I get to retire next year, after 20 years.
OF: That was always our plan: to join the military and maybe retire by the time we were 40. We both were deployed to Germany, but I got injured in my fifth year, and we both came back to the States. Not long after, Ainara joined the Coast Guard.
AF: I told Oscar he should go do something else, which is where the food truck comes in.
Which is how you both got your start in the food business?
OF: We rolled it out in Miami, then moved it to Virginia when Ainara was sent there, and then to the St. Louis area. We sold Argentinian street food, similar to what we’re doing at City Foundry. We did well but never wanted to get too established, because we could get asked to move at any time.
AF: Which is why the food truck was the perfect thing for Oscar and for me.
Could you have done something else?
OF: I have a degree in echocardiology—I performed EKGs and did radiography. I wanted to be a doctor but also a soccer player—and now here I am in the restaurant business. [Laughs.] When I started the food truck, I was still working in the hospital. When I started doing pediatric work, I saw that some of the kids make it and some didn’t. That was it for me.
So a food truck it was.
AF: We started the truck in Miami, but then I was given a choice of transferring to St. Louis or to a small town in Alaska. We did our research, but when I started reading about how people use sunboxes there in the winter, well…
OF: I didn’t understand why the Coast Guard would be in St. Louis, but I didn’t ask too many questions. Then I remembered it was on the Mississippi River.
AF: We knew that St. Louis would be a good place to introduce our food, but we were cautious, because almost all the Hispanic food here was Mexican, and it’s so much more than that. We knew we had to differentiate ourselves. If you go to South America looking for tacos, there’s Taco Bell, but that’s it. Now parrilladas, they’re everywhere, big and small.
What items did you sell on the truck?
OF: Empanadas, sandwiches with chimichurri, churros—the same type of things we’re offering at City Foundry. We had a great spot just outside Scott Air Force Base, doing lunches five days a week. We just do events and markets now.
Did local residents embrace the food?
AF: Pretty much, but there was some education involved. Handing out samples helped. It helped telling customers that empanadas were just like turnovers.
OF: Or Hot Pockets. [Laughs].
What happened during the winter months?
AF: When a water faucet on the truck froze and burst, we knew that we needed a brick-and-mortar, which is why we opened Los Gauchos in the same center where the food truck was. We held a family meeting, decided that was the direction we all wanted to go, and made the move, unlike when I grew up and was told what was going to happen next. We were open three years for dinner only but, even with a name like Los Gauchos Parrilla Argentina, the restaurant was still known as a lunch place, so we thought it best to relocate and rebrand. I visited a friend of mine in New Zealand who was a branding expert and worked in his restaurant in exchange for his expertise. He said the first thing to do was drop the “los,” which means Mexican to most people, and to Americanize the name that no one could pronounce. We thought of Tango’s, and he said, "No, people will think you’re a dance hall." He said the light blue we used for the logo sent the wrong message. So in 2019, we moved to Fairview Heights and called our place Gauchos Argentinian Steakhouse, with strong red as the predominant color and no confusion as to what we were. A gaucho is an Argentinian cowboy from La Pampa, and most people know that. But you know what? People still come in looking for tacos and Mexican food!
What’s the difference between Gauchos and South American chain steakhouses?
OF: Traditionally, gauchos cooked their meat on flat stones over a wood fire. They didn’t carry around grills and rotisseries. So we incorporated that idea, and we’re the only place that I know of that does. We cook the meat in the kitchen to medium-rare and take it to the table, where guests slice off pieces, cook them on the 800-degree stone to whatever doneness they want, and then experiment with our homemade sauces. We can also fully cook any item in the kitchen, for those who don’t want to use the stone grill, but most people do. And we have things like Argentinian tamales, too—humitas—which are not cooked on the stone grill.
AF: We approach the dining culture differently as well. We will never rush you. We want you to enjoy the experience, no matter how long it takes.
How did you get into the City Foundry spot?
AF: I had seen all the construction when I was working here. We had been trying to get over to this side of the river for a long time, and City Foundry was the perfect venue for the handheld foods we were planning. We decided fairly quickly that we wanted to be part of it.
Talk about your food stall—I mean, kitchen.
OF: Yes, City Foundry calls them kitchens, and ours is compact and efficient. You can have a kitchen there, but I tell people it better be designed like a food truck kitchen. I was the carpenter, electrician, plumber, and menu board maker. And I learned all of these things before YouTube.
Is the kitchen big enough to use for catering?
OF: It should be. But if the order gets too big, we can piggyback and use the kitchen at Gauchos. The food truck, which is really a trailer, has a full commercial kitchen, too, so we can bring what we do to you any number of ways.
What’s on the menu at Buenos Aires Café?
AF: Basically the proven items we’ve been serving on the food truck for years. One Argentinian staple is empanadas; we’ll have at least six kinds available at all times: stuffed with meat, vegetarian ones, a caprese, sweet ones with Nutella and banana or dulce de leche. We’ll do seasonals stuffed with pumpkin and apple. You can dust them with sugar or drizzle them with sauce.
OF: We’ll also sell sandwiches—a ribeye sandwich, choripán sandwiches—and desserts—churros and alfajores, shortbread cookies topped with dulce de leche, sometimes coated in chocolate, which pair well with espresso or mate.
AF: We wanted to serve drinks that you don’t get in other places, so we offer fresh-brewed yerba mate, which is a bitter, woody, strong, green tea that many people sweeten. We also have cold varieties: plain, pineapple, orange, and mint. There’s also espresso, plain or topped with dulce de leche or condensed milk, which adds sweetness and cuts bitterness.
OF: We have a line of canned drinks from South America that contain pulp and sometimes small pieces of fruit—watermelon, pineapple, guava, and one with cantaloupe, pineapple, and vanilla.
AF: People who try drinks with texture usually end up liking drinks with texture. I sure did. One of our signs says "Welcome and Explore," and that’s what we hope people will do. Don’t say you don’t like something until you’ve tried it.
Is there a signature item?
OF: Papas Gauchas: seasoned French fries topped with pulled pork or skirt steak, house-made hot sauce and garlic sauce, which we call chimi sauce.
Do you have any secrets you want to divulge?
OF: We buy good meat, really good meat. We pan fry the meat, and we cook the beef to medium. If you want it cooked more or less, we can do that. Ainara’s recipe for garlic sauce—what we call chimi sauce—is very good. And my recipe for chimichurri is very good, too. In Argentina, there are as many chimichurri sauces as there are people who make them, just like barbecue sauce up here.
Any secret recipes you might share?
OF: Ainara’s recipe for garlic sauce—what we call chimi sauce—is very good. And my recipe for chimichurri is very good, too. In Argentina, there are as many chimichurri sauces as there are people who make them, just like barbecue sauce here.
Will you offer specials?
OF: We will, but here they have to be approved, because there are so many of us in the food hall. They don’t want to have three places offering the same type of special on the same day, which I understand. [Laughs.] Right now, I want to claim first rights to a beef Milanesa sandwich.
Is your family in the restaurant business?
OF: Our kids help us, for sure, and my younger brother, who’s a highly trained chef in Las Vegas, may move here and open a sit-down restaurant with me. But big brother says it may have to be named Oscar’s, not Oswaldo’s.
How will you both split the duties?
OF: I will operate the café until Ainara retires from the Coast Guard next year. This was her baby, you know—her retirement plan. [Laughs.] When we put Buenos Aires together, we didn’t know she’d be working in Chicago.
How many seats are there at City Foundry STL?
AF: A total of 400. The Kitchen Bar is in the middle and will handle all of the alcohol. We are on the left end, but we have a loungy area near us that can also be used for private parties.
OF: Plus, people will want to explore, so there’s really not a bad location in the place. And the POS system is the same throughout, so once you order from one place, you’re familiar with how the whole process works.
Are you planning any other steakhouses, cafés, or new concepts?
OF: We started small, with a food truck, we grew, and we came to St. Louis, which was part of the plan. Since I love soccer so much and soccer is so big in South America, I hope the next step is to bring some aspect of what we do to the new MLS stadium. That’s my dream.
AF: And in the meantime, we hope that some of the MLS players come to see us. We’re both big fans.
