Argentina Food Guide

Argentina Food & Drink

Argentine food can be summed up by one word: Beef. And not just any beef, but the best in the world – succulent, cherry-red and healthy, meat raised on some of the greenest, most extensive pastures known to cattle. The Asado or barbecue, is an institution, every bit a part of the Argentine way of life as football, fast driving and tango.

Where to Eat

Apart from generic restaurantes (or restoranes), you will come across parillas (for steak and beef), marisquerias (for seafood), confiterias (cafes for coffee, cakes, snacks or simple meals), comedores (simple local canteens), pizzrias, bodegones (unpretentious restaurants that theoretically serve a house wine) and cantinas (neighborhood places often dishing up Italian food, such as homemade pasta). By South American standards the quality of restaurants is high and though by international standards they are not always cheap, they often represent good value. If you’re on a tight budget make lunch your main meal and take advantage of the menu de dia or menu ejectivo – usually set meals for about $60 – and in the evening try tenedor libre restaurants where you can eat much as you like for a set price at self-service buffets. Up your budget to $120 or so a head and you can dine A La Carte at most mid-range restaurants, wine included. Argentina also has a fair sprinkling of gourmet locales (restaurantes de autor) concentrated in, but by no means limited in Buenos Aires. In these your per-head bill will more be more like $200 or even more, though this still compares well with cities in other industrialized countries and you get fabulous food, wine, ambience and service. You should try and splash out at least once during your visit.

When to Eat

Breakfast is usually served up until around 10am and lunch from around noon until 3pm. Hardly any restaurant opens for dinner before 8pm and in the hotter months – and all year-round in Buenos Aires – few people turn up before 10 or even 11pm. Don’t be surprised to see people pouring into restaurants well after midnight: Argentines and Porteños in particular are night owls. If you think you’re going to be starving by 7pm, do like the locals and either have a hearty lunch or take merienda – tea and snacks – at a café or confiteria in the late afternoon.

What to Eat

While beef is the most prominent feature on many menus, it’s by no means the whole story. In general, you seldom have a bade meal in Argentina. That said, imagination, innovation and a sense of subtle flavor are sometimes lacking, with Argentines preferring to eat the wholesome but often bland dishes their immigrant forebearers cooked. At the other end of the spectrum, there is some very (some might say overly) inventive cordon bleu cooking being concocted by daring young chefs across the country. Fast food is extremely popular, but you can also snack on delicious local specialties such as empanadas or homemade pizza if you want to avoid the ubiquitous multinational chains.

Snacks

If you’re feeling peckish during the day there are plenty of minutas (snacks) to choose from. The lomito (as opposed to lamo – the name of the steak cut itself) is a nourishing sandwich filled with a juicy slice of steak, often made with pan árabe (pita bread); the chivito (originally Uruguayan) refers to a similar kind of sandwich made with a less tender cut, though it literally means “kid” or baby goat). Other street food includes the choripán, a local version of the hot dog made with natural meaty sausages (chorizos), while at cafes a popular snack is the tostado (or tostado mixto), a toasted cheese and ham sandwich, often daintily thin and sometimes (in the provinces) called a carlitos. Barrolucas are beef and cheese sandwiches, a local variant on the cheeseburger and very popular around Mendoza. Milanesas refers to breaded veal escalopes served in a sandwich, hamburger-style. Empanadas are small pastries with savory fillings, usually stuffed with beef, cheese and/or vegetables, although the fillings are as varied as the cook’s imagination.

Parrillas, Pizza and Pasta

Parrillas are simply barbecues (or the restaurants that employ them) where you can try the traditional Asado. Usually there’s a set menu (the Parrillada), though the establishments themselves vary enormously. At many, especially in the big cities, the décor is stylish, the staff laidback, the crockery delicate and the meat served tidily. Elsewhere, especially in smaller towns, parrillas are more basic and you’re likely to be served by burly, sweaty grill-men who spend all their time carving hunks of flesh and hurling them onto wooden platters. Portions in parrillas are generally very large, intending for sharing and accompaniments like fries or salad are ordered separately, again served on large platters to share.

Mass immigration from Italy since the middle of the nineteenth century has had a profound influence on Argentine food and drink – the abundance of fresh pasta (pasta casera) is just one example. The fillings tend to be a little unexciting (lots of cheese, including Ricotta, but seldom meat), the sauces are not exactly memorable (mostly tomato and onion) and the pasta itself cooked beyond al dente, yet it’s a reliable staple and rarely downright bad. Pizzas are very good on the whole, though the toppings tend to lack originality, especially away from the capital. One popular ingredient regularly used as a garnish may be unfamiliar to visitors: the palmito (palm heart), a sweet, crunchy vegetable resembling something between asparagus and celery. Argentine pizzas are nearly always of the thick-crust variety, wood-oven baked and very big, meant to be divided between a number of diners.

Regional Cuisine

Although you will find parrillas through Argentina, different regions have their own specialties too. Probably the most noteworthy regional cuisine is found in the Argentine Northeast, where as well as the juiciest empanadas, you can find humitas – steamed creamed sweetcorn, served in parcels made from corncob husks and locro, a substantial stew based on maize, with onions, beans and meat thrown in. Andean quinoa is a frequent ingredient in everything from soups to empanadas. Patagonia, meanwhile, is famed for its barbecued lamb, staked around the fire and jams made from local fruit such as calafote.

Other Cuisines

In addition to the Italian cooking available all over the country, Spanish restaurants serve tapas and familiar dishes such as paella, while specifically Basque restaurants are also fairly commonplace; these are often the places to head for fish or seafood. Chinese and, increasingly, Korean restaurants are found in many Argentine cities, but they rarely serve anything remotely like authentic Asian food and specialize in tenedor libre buffet diners. You can find excellent sushi and Peruvian food in Buenos Aires, where nearly every national cuisine from Armenian to Vietnamese via Mexican, Polish and Thai is also available, but such variety is rare in the provinces. Arab and Middle Eastern food, including specialties such as kebabs and kepe, seasoned ground raw meat, is far more widespread, as is German fare, such as sauerkraut (chucrut) and frankfurters, along with Central and Eastern European food, often served in choperias, or beer gardens. Welsh tearooms are a specialty of Patagonia.

Vegetarian Food

As a vegetarian in Argentina you shouldn’t have too many problems in the capital, the larger cities or the Patagonian resorts, all of which are relatively cosmopolitan. A number of restaurants completely dedicated to non-meat-eaters do exist and many places have a few good non-meat alternatives. The exceptions are the parrillas, though the sight and smell of entire animals roasting on the grill is unlikely to appeal to vegetarians anyway. In smaller provincial towns, however, vegetarian fare tends to be a lot simpler and you will likely have to adjust to a diet of pizza, pasta, empanadas and salads, with very little variety in the toppings and fillings. The good news is that these fillings are often options such as spinach, acelga (Swiss chard – similar to spinach, but slightly more bitter) and Ricotta. Other foods to keep an eye out for are fainá, a fairly bland but agreeable Genovese specialty made with chickpea dough and Milanese de soja (breaded soya “cutlets”) while milanesas of vegetables like berenjena (aubergine) and calabaza (pumpkin) are also quite popular.