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Buenos Aires, Argentina > Buenos Aires restaurants > La Biela La BielaAvenida Presidente M. Quintana (@ Presidente Ortiz); Tel. +(011.54.11) 4804-0449
 A welcome sight on a chilly day is a submarino - hot chocolate made with a chocolate bar and warm milk. La Biela serves them up with flair. Photo by Clare Nisbet. You will recognize La Biela a couple of ways. The first: location, location, location. La Biela manages to conveniently park itself directly opposite the Cementerio de la Recoleta, next to one of the city’s most gorgeous and bustling parks. The second: there are usually people literally bursting from the seams of this otherwise unassuming café (we can probably attribute the second characteristic to the success of the first). La Biela has been in place for the better part of a century, and they won’t let you forget it. Like most places in Buenos Aires with this kind of history and zip code, service is slow, food is mediocre, and you really should pay it a visit – just to say you did. La Biela takes the pretension one step further by elevating their already too high prices when you enjoy the food on the patio in the sun. It’s shameless, really and oh so porteño. La Biela hosts 50 tables or so inside, half as many again outside, and still manages to pack in customers like sardines – particularly on the weekends during the market. It looks like a typical Buenos Aires café and the menu is exactly what you would expect. A couple of interesting choices include a huge American breakfast for US$10 and sweet crepes for desert. The menu is extensive if typical and largely overpriced. La Biela gets its name from the connecting rod of a car’s engine, without which the car would not function and the place is famous for being the meeting place of car racing champs in the 50’s. These days, the nostalgia more than its current likeability keeps it going and probably will for decades more. —La Biela review by Clare Nisbet
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