Sarkis has occupied the corner of Thames and Jufré since 1982, when the late Carlos "Sarkis" Katabian opened a small Armenian kitchen to feed a neighbourhood built by generations of Middle Eastern immigrants. Forty-three years later, the restaurant is 260 seats deep, serves lunch and dinner seven days a week, and is still almost always packed to capacity with a waiting line that spills onto the pavement. It remains the single most important Armenian table in Latin America and, arguably, the loudest and happiest room in Buenos Aires.
The dining room is gloriously unreconstructed. Fluorescent lighting, white tablecloths under paper, families of eight next to first-date couples next to tables of visiting Armenian diaspora who have come specifically to eat here. The walls are covered with photographs of the founder and his family spanning four decades. The soundtrack is the collective hum of two hundred people eating meze in three languages simultaneously. Service is efficient, fast, occasionally grumpy (a house style), and delivered by servers who have in some cases worked here for twenty-five years.
The food is where the restaurant's reputation lives. Start, as everyone does, with the meze tier. Hummus, muhammara, baba ghanoush, tabbouleh, warm pita from the oven, stuffed grape leaves, kibbeh nayyeh (raw lamb with bulgur and spices), cheese-filled boreks. Keep ordering from the meze list until the table is full. Then commit to the grill section. Lamb kebabs on skewers, kafta, grilled chicken shawarma, or the monumental cordero al horno (roast lamb shoulder) for groups of four or more. Prices are among the lowest in any serious Buenos Aires restaurant; two hundred dollars will feed a table of six to excess.
Sarkis is loved not despite its rough edges but because of them. It is the restaurant the city's chefs. Including Don Julio's Pablo Rivero, several Michelin-starred kitchens nearby, and most of the Palermo dining establishment. Go to on their days off. It is where Buenos Aires families celebrate birthdays, where visiting football teams eat after matches, where couples have their first dates and return on their twentieth anniversaries. It does not take itself seriously, which is precisely why everyone else in the city takes it so seriously indeed.