Flan like a gaucho's mama used to make is a memorable finish for a meal at Obelisco. Mike Peters / China Daily

Quality meet cuts, like beef tenderloin, are key in the grill room. Provided to China Daily

Superb steaks and a savvy wine list give Obelisco star quality. Mike Peters follows the carnivores to Shunyi district.

Several years ago, at a party in Boston, I found myself chatting with a vivacious woman in her mid-60s who said she enjoyed spending summers in Maine like I did. Well, not quite like I did. Later I learned she was one of the Rockefellers, a grande but unpretentious dame who was well-dressed without wearing her money on her sleeve.

I thought of her again during a recent visit to Obelisco, the fine steakhouse in Beijing's Shunyi district that's often alluded to with the superlatives of wealth. Opulent it may be, but it's not really in your face. The immense, open-ceilinged dining room is fairly casual, the table settings elegant but comfortable.

The first hint of particular sophistication - not counting the namesake obelisk that stands like a sentry outside - is the service, from the suave Chinese host to the table servers to the sommelier.

"The staff, the chefs, everyone has been trained by professionals from Argentina," says Guillermo E. Devoto, an Obelisco regular who recently left Beijing after two years as minister in the Argentine embassy.

There is another Obelisco restaurant in Buenos Aires, which has the same fine-dining elegance and, like its Beijing facsimile, a wine cellar to make a gourmand weep. In the cool confines of the cellar in Shunyi lurk some vintages that are decades old, but the immense stock includes price-friendlier bottles as well. The labels are generally Argentine, but choice vintages from Chile and Uruguay can be found, too.

The meat of the matter at this steakhouse, of course, is steak. Obelisco serves up prime cuts from the pampas, the grassy plains of Argentina that have fostered generations of cattle ranches and mouth-watering T-bones. Our favorite on the menu was a mountainous tenderloin, tender and juicy, exquisitely medium-rare - a request that's a high-risk maneuver in much of China but business as usual here. Here, "fancy restaurant" doesn't mean a fabulous but tiny morsel on the plate. The mains here are big enough for a gaucho appetite.

Like Chinese diners, and there were plenty in the dining room on our most recent visit, Latin Americans appreciate some parts of the cow that don't excite other Westerners. At Obelisco, you'll find achuras (kidney) and sweetbreads that make visitors from South America sigh with delight - served on an appetizer platter with two kinds of sausage. Starters with more universal appeal include empanadas, the Argentine fried pastries filled with meat or corn-and-cheese. Or choose the quick-fried prawns with chili, garlic, baijiu (Chinese white liquor) and vanilla sauce - a flavor combination that lingers fairylike on the palate and memory.

Spanish ham, marinated goose liver with port-wine sauce and a cheese platter were all winning cold starters on different visits. There are several impressive-looking salads on offer as well.

Corn pancakes, creamed spinach and a silky rendition of mashed potatoes seemed to be the popular side dishes around the room as well as at our table. All are served a la carte.

Entrees include the imported rib-eye steak, house-made sausages and locro (a traditional stew made with beef, pork, pumpkin and corn hominy). Argentina is famed for lamb as well as beef, and a plate of grilled lamb chops lightly dressed with lemon was eagerly shared at our table.

If you meet fans of Obelisco later, they will inevitably ask what you had for dessert. Options include an Argentine ice-cream cake with nuts, mango mouse and apple puff pastry with ice cream. They may be delicious, but we succumbed to grander temptations: a luminous morello (cherry) mousse and a to-die-for flan with real dulce de leche on the side (don't shrug past the limply inadequate menu listing: "pudding with sweet milk sauce"). We didn't try the "ice-cream ball" (a combination of chocolate, coffee, niger seed, hazelnut, strawberry, pistachio nut, vanilla), but the dessert drew gasps as it sailed by on its way to another table. We may have to go back and try it.

Contact the writer at michaelpeters@chinadaily.com.cn.

The dining roomgives diners an expansive, airy space to enjoy a festive meal. Provided to China Daily

(China Daily 04/27/2014 page7)