"Given the excellent reviews that this restaurant, la Rosa at Patios de Cafayate, has received on TripAdvisor, we were expecting great things. I am afraid that it fell well below expectations. The restaurant and the hotel with which it is associated are off-shoot enterprises operated...by el Esteco bodega and vineyard. The setting amongst the vines is idyllic. It was one of the five restaurants at which we had dined on our trip to Argentina. I am afraid to say that it was the one about which we were least convinced. Points for consideration are as follows: 1. I often like a pre-dinner beer. Unfortunately, the only Salta beer that was available was a dark beer (Salta Negra . I don’t like dark beer, but I drank it as there was no alternative. They must have run out of the other types. 2. There are two sittings for dinner (a bit like being at school! at 20:00 and 21:30. I really do not like this type of arrangement. The table should be available for the full evening if the diners wish, even if it is not fully utilised. One can’t help but feel a certain amount of pressure to finish the meal. 3. We had reserved a table for the 20:00 sitting. When we got to the restaurant at 20:00 sharp, the restaurant still not open. It did not open for another 10-15 minutes. Given that we were supposed to be time-limited as to our table’s availability, this was irritating. 4. The dining room was rather small and cramped. The evenings were cool, so the temperature was not suitable for eating outside. I do not know whether there were heat lamps (these would have been necessary , but I did not see anybody eating outside. 5. Many of the TripAdvisor reviewers have commented on the views of the mountains from the restaurant. This is true during daylight hours but is irrelevant after nightfall. 6. One reviewer (at least has commented on the attire of the staff. I entirely agree. The Maîtresse D was in jeans, but this was not too bad in itself. However, the (all-male serving staff were wearing white shirts and aprons, but these were inadequate cover for the jeans and well-used trainers that they were wearing. 7. We did manage to obtain our bottle of wine quickly, but thereafter progress was slow. Admittedly, we were competing against a table of 12 who managed to enter just before us by queuing at the restaurant door. We did get the menu fairly quickly, but thereafter it took a little time to place our order. Our impression of the menu was that it was not terribly exciting or interesting, and it showed too much of a bias towards vegetarianism. There was little that really took our fancy. We eventually obtained our first courses at 20:50, theoretically leaving us 40 minutes to finish our meal in its entirety. 8. To the food at last. My wife started with the llama carpaccio followed by the shredded duck as her main course. She had some difficulty finding any duck, concealed, as it was, under the salad. The salad was terribly overdressed with balsamic vinegar. I had the gambettas in bacon followed by ravioli stuffed with cheese. I do not think that the bacon added a great deal to the gambettas. The pasta was pretty awful. Instead of being light and sensuous, it was hard and stodgy. My wife took a strawberry ice cream for her desert which she said was the best part of her meal. But it’s a bit difficult to mess up a (commercially-obtained? ice cream. 9. Other reviewers have remarked on the ‘excellence’ of the wine list. Well, in my view, it is not excellent. It is very limited. As is to be expected, it only lists el Esteco wines but there is no information about the vintages. We chose a bottle of el Estero Finca Notables Malbec, supposedly the best Malbec on the list. The millesime was 2015 and the cost was ARP1111. Not extortionate, but we had had much better for a lesser price. 10. We finished our dinner shortly before 22:00. It was a pity that our last evening in northwest Argentina had proved something of a disappointment. I believed that other diners who had booked for the 21:30 sitting were being delayed."