Baires Grill

Italy's got its hands in everything: pizza's eaten everywhere from Cincinnati to the Congo, and pop on a Steve Perry wig and stick your arms out to the side, and you realize you're basically the Vitruvian Man, just a little less ok with your disproportionate wang. Argentinean cuisine's no different; for proof, check out Baires Grill.

Baires feels like a spacious, high-ceilinged Buenos Aires bistro, matching Old World marble with heavier New World tables and leather banquettes, and boasting a menu indicative of Argentina's Central Region, where Italian immigrants' grub-magic meets the famed beef of the Las Pampas grasslands, much to the delight of your own central region. Small items range from salads like Bosco pear & arugula w/ honey & Malbec vinaigrette, to rotisserie chicken w/ pine nuts, raisins, green apple, & pesto mayo, while meat apps range from prosciutto de Parma with soft Burrata cheese to more rustic stuff like chorizo, blood sausage, and sweetbreads, edible proof that the thymus gland has the best PR firm ever. For mains, there's a contingent of Milanese dishes (chicken, beef), pastas (gnocchi w/ blue cheese & Malbec-caramelized pears), and the stars: never-frozen steaks imported from Las Pampas, including filets, NY strips, and ribeyes, plus Argentine faves like skirt steaks from 14 to 32oz, and the difficult-to-find flap steak -- a fan-shaped cut from the porterhouse region of the bovine, with a striated flank-style texture and exceptionally meaty flavor, which is always a great quality to have, unless you're a soda.

Baires also reps desserts like chocolate molten cake a la mode, and slings loads of Argentine Malbecs, Cabs, and whites, plus dessert wines like Late Harvest from Torrontes -- dammit, they got to Toronto, too!!