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Victor's Grill, West Falls Church, Kitchen-Prepared Churrascaria on Lee Highway


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I had dinner the other night at Victor's Grill on Lee Highway, an Argentine joint. My companion and I shared a parillada, enormous amounts of barbecued strip steak, pork chop, chicken, black sausage, and intestine, along with copious salad, rice and french fries. All accompanied by Argentine beer. I had the cebiche appetizer, which may have been the best thing of all. Or maybe the fruity/cream dessert. The service was very attentive, and nobody corrected my Portuguese-accented Spanish. It is not an elegant restaurant, but it is an honest place, and the meat, while not up to RTS standards, is tasty.

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Went with a friend to the S. Washington St. location and ordered the cheaper Parillada - short ribs, flank steak, blood sausage, intestines, sausage, chicken, and pork chop - with choice of 2 sides (we had salad and fried yuca) - for $42. The meats were well seasoned - everything but the flank steak was safely overcooked, the flank steak was cooked to medium rare as requested. I didn't like the blood sausage and the intestines but my Korean friend enjoyed the intestines (since he says he's used to eating intestines with that gritty stuff in the middle). There was enough food to feed at least 3 adults, if not 4. Nothing was top quality but it's cheaper than what Chima charges for 1 person.

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After reading Ferguson Henderson's Nose to Tail, I wanted to eat some innards. I have eaten tongue, heart, kidney, liver and tripe, but wanted to branch out.

Researched a bit and decided to try Victor's Grill.

It's allegedly. Bolivian/Argentinan churrascaria. Well, maybe so. When I think of churrascaria, I think of men in gaucho costumes carrying around meat on swords, sliced at the table. This is not that.

It's an old fashioned family style restaurant, serving enormous portions of adequate food at reasonable prices. It's one of those places where the salad is mostly iceberg lettuce, slices of onion, and slices of sad tomatoes, which is especially sad in July. They were the type of tomatoes one puts up with in January.

Verdict: I have always liked tongue. Cold tongue in vinaigrette is not an ideal dish. I have always like sweetbreads. Plain fried sweetbreads is not an ideal dish. I have never liked kidney. Victor's kidney soup did not change my mind about kidneys, although the rest of the soup, the broth and potatoes, was quite savory. I have never eaten blood sausage. Too bad you can't get boudin noir in Louisiana anymore (why?) but plain blood sausage is boring. Next try, Korean soondae. I have never eaten intestines. Now I have. It was bitter and gritty. No mas.

The tres leches cake was an excellent version of this dessert. The wine barely adequate. The large margarita the size of a birdbath, and after persuading them to make it on the rocks, not frozen, with good tequila it still was made with sour mix but drinkable and after two I felt no pain. My son had to drive us home.

There was a lot of meat on the Argentine parrillada. If you want a lot of meat for your money, this is a place for it. Not excellent quality, but a lot for the money.

I won't go back, but everything was perfectly ok. Actually, if I ever have a craving for tres leches, this is where i would go.

Surprisingly, the chimichurri was excellent. It was red, not green, and I was apprehensive, but it was the best thing I had. That, and the little hot rolls in a bread basket, fresh and hot. I usually avoid wheat, but after two giant margaritas I succumbed. Dip them in the chimichurri. You won't be sorry.

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After reading Ferguson Henderson's Nose to Tail, I wanted to eat some innards. I have eaten tongue, heart, kidney, liver and tripe, but wanted to branch out.

Researched a bit and decided to try Victor's Grill.

It's allegedly. Bolivian/Argentinan churrascaria. Well, maybe so. When I think of churrascaria, I think of men in gaucho costumes carrying around meat on swords, sliced at the table. This is not that.

It's an old fashioned family style restaurant, serving enormous portions of adequate food at reasonable prices. It's one of those places where the salad is mostly iceberg lettuce, slices of onion, and slices of sad tomatoes, which is especially sad in July. They were the type of tomatoes one puts up with in January.

Verdict: I have always liked tongue. Cold tongue in vinaigrette is not an ideal dish. I have always like sweetbreads. Plain fried sweetbreads is not an ideal dish. I have never liked kidney. Victor's kidney soup did not change my mind about kidneys, although the rest of the soup, the broth and potatoes, was quite savory. I have never eaten blood sausage. Too bad you can't get boudin noir in Louisiana anymore (why?) but plain blood sausage is boring. Next try, Korean soondae. I have never eaten intestines. Now I have. It was bitter and gritty. No mas.

The tres leches cake was an excellent version of this dessert. The wine barely adequate. The large margarita the size of a birdbath, and after persuading them to make it on the rocks, not frozen, with good tequila it still was made with sour mix but drinkable and after two I felt no pain. My son had to drive us home.

There was a lot of meat on the Argentine parrillada. If you want a lot of meat for your money, this is a place for it. Not excellent quality, but a lot for the money.

I won't go back, but everything was perfectly ok. Actually, if I ever have a craving for tres leches, this is where i would go.

Surprisingly, the chimichurri was excellent. It was red, not green, and I was apprehensive, but it was the best thing I had. That, and the little hot rolls in a bread basket, fresh and hot. I usually avoid wheat, but after two giant margaritas I succumbed. Dip them in the chimichurri. You won't be sorry.

This is an excellent review, and I agree with everything you've written (except that I've never tried the Tres Leches here).

[And I don't know why this wasn't in the Dining Guide. There used to be two of these, and I think I must have deleted the Virginia entry while forgetting to insert the Multiple Locations entry.]

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Plain fried sweetbreads is not an ideal dish.

I was in Rome, once, in the late 1980s, where I wandered into some little eatery at lunch time one day. I don't remember what else I had to eat and drink there, but I had a plate of sweetbreads, dredged in flour, fried, and served with lemon. The surface of the sweetbreads was hot, crisp, and salty, giving way to the soft, custardy, luscious flesh within. That may not have been an ideal dish, but I still remember it a quarter century later as a highlight of my gustatory career.

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Hersch, Restaurant Eve has really good sweetbreads.  I was tricked into eating them by the waiter, but it was a happy occasion.  I couldn't decide between the sweetbreads and something else, told the waiter that I had never eaten sweetbreads and was afraid to try them, so I ordered the something else.  The waiter brought me the sweetbreads and winked at me. They were just as you describe, crisp on the outside, pillowy and yielding on the inside.

Victor's sweetbreads are not that.

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Hersch, Restaurant Eve has really good sweetbreads.  I was tricked into eating them by the waiter, but it was a happy occasion.  I couldn't decide between the sweetbreads and something else, told the waiter that I had never eaten sweetbreads and was afraid to try them, so I ordered the something else.  The waiter brought me the sweetbreads and winked at me. They were just as you describe, crisp on the outside, pillowy and yielding on the inside.

Victor's sweetbreads are not that.

I can well believe that Victor's sweetbreads are not that, but the lovely dish I remember with such pleasure from that day in Rome was still more or less plain fried sweetbreads.

I haven't been to Restaurant Eve in far too long, and you remind me I must remedy that. I never had sweetbreads there, but the best dish I ever had at Restaurant Eve (and among the best anywhere, actually) was tripe, so I'd expect a stellar treatment of other bits of offal as well.

Your waiter at Restaurant Eve sounds like something of a guardian angel or fairy godmother. I'm sure you tipped generously.

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I always tip what I consider to be well.  I never punish the wait staff for things beyond their control.  If I am really, really pissed off at the wait staff, I still tip 15% on the total after tax.  Otherwise at least 20% of the total after tax, sometimes 30%.

When you think about it, an extra five or ten percent on a $50 check is $2.50 or $5.  I spend that much, at least, on gas getting to the restaurant.  If I can give it to Exxon/Mobil, I can give it to a human being with sore feet.

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When you think about it, an extra five or ten percent on a $50 check is $2.50 or $5.  I spend that much, at least, on gas getting to the restaurant.  If I can give it to Exxon/Mobil, I can give it to a human being with sore feet.

That's a very nice, kind attitude.

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I tried Victors once a few years ago and was not impressed. Big portions of tough meat. I too am an offal lover. Lately I have been getting my fix at Taco Bamba. Sweetbreads frequently show up on the menu, deep fried outside, custardy inside. Also great is the El baso, with pork and beef tongue dressed with grilled scallion and aioli.

Strangely enough, another good place for sweetbreads is Cafe Tatti in Mclean. It is a bit like stepping back into a 1950's American version of an French bistro, but they always have sweetbreads on the menu or available to order off the menu

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We have been regulars (every five-six weeks) of Victor's Grill and its close-by sister restaurant La Estancia for several years now. You go for the meat, no doubt, but my wife most often has the salmon and she quite likes it. We have even taken vegetarian friends there--not out of premeditated cruelty, but because of the large array of side dishes that can easily serve as main courses. And our vegetarian friends enjoyed them (especially the fried platanos and the yucca). While we are very fond of the Parrillada Argentina--mixed grill with various steak cuts as well as chinchulines (fried intestines), mollejas (sweetbreads) and morcilla (blood sausage), Victor's now offers also a giant tomahawk steak--very tasty! One minor complaint: the platanos (fried plantains) are not always as ripe as they should.

The servers are very kind and accommodating and they have done a very good job during the pandemic, setting up an exterior tent with all cold-weather comforts. 

Victor's is like some of the "steakhouses for the people" that one can find in Argentina (though Victor's includes many Bolivian specialties in its menu). The clientele is an interesting mix of (predominantly) Latinos, Asians (mostly Koreans, given the obvious spiritual affinity with Korean steakhouses) and adventurous gringos.

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