Argentina Adventures: Eating My Way through BA

I certainly ate well in Buenos Aires, whether the food was familiar or more foreign. I didn’t go with the idea of gorging myself on the world-famous beef, although I knew it was central to Argentine cuisine. Since I’m not much of red meat eater, I was happy to discover that the food scene in BA was considerably broader than I’d expected.  As a matter of fact, in many ways, it was quite similar to what I’d find in the U.S.

For starters, café culture is alive and well in Buenos Aires, as it is in hip neighborhoods in New York and DC.  Whether I ordered café, café con leche, a cortado, or a cappuccino, the coffee was reliably good.  Throughout the city, I stumbled across cafés and casual restaurants with menus featuring a variety of coffee drinks, pastries, sandwiches and salads.  As you can see in the photo below, I’m enjoying smoked salmon eggs Benedict at the charming Coco Café in our Palermo neighborhood. 

A quiet morning at a neighborhood café

Bagels were easy to find.  However, they didn’t generally come with cream cheese and lox.  When we went out for weekend brunch in the Parque 3 de febrero, I had a tasty bagel sandwich of shrimp topped with cabbage salad – sacrilegious, but delicious!

Bagel sandwich for brunch

While I avoided McDonald’s and Starbucks, I stopped into the local outpost of Le Pain Quotidien when I was out walking one day.  Their menu, posted in the window, included a calabaza croque monsieur that sounded tempting.  The thick slice of pumpkin blended beautifully with the melted cheese made for a vegetarian delight. 

Vegetarians might find it somewhat challenging to dine out in Buenos Aires.  They’re often limited to cheese and carbs.  Elisa, who doesn’t eat meat of any kind, related the problems she faced.  At first, she would ask if a dish contained carne, not realizing that in Argentina, carne refers only to beef.  If you tell people you don’t eat carne, they’ll assume you’re okay eating pollo (chicken) or jamon (ham).  When she ordered a veggie pizza at a local pizzeria, it arrived with ham on top.

Speaking of pizza, it’s widely available in Buenos Aires.  Many Italians immigrated to the city in the late 1800s.  However, they were mostly from northern Italy.  Perhaps that accounts for the fact that Argentine pizza isn’t like the New York or New Haven style that I find at home.  First of all, the dough is much heavier. Secondly, there’s just a trace of red sauce.  Also, the pizza is topped with a very thick layering of cheese and usually decorated with a scattering of olives.  Additional toppings can be ordered.  A single slice of pizza is quite filling. 

Milanesa is another Italian influenced item that is quite popular. This is a cutlet that is lightly breaded and pan-fried, as in veal scaloppini.  In Argentina, it’s usually a thin slice of beef, although it can also be pork, chicken or eggplant.  It appears on many restaurant menus, and you can easily find many varieties of milanesa in the frozen section of the supermarket.  Somehow, I never got around to trying any of them. 

Since the Porteños pride themselves on their European heritage, it came as no surprise that I found an excellent French bakery, strategically located right between my apartment and Elisa’s place.  Boulan has been baking breads and pastries in the French style since 1933.  Every time I walked past, I’d peek in.  If there was a line of people, I’d continue on my way.  Otherwise, I couldn’t resist going in to get a few treats.  They made excellent croissants and pain au chocolat.  I especially liked their apple filled libretto de manzana and their moulin aux peches.  It made me feel like I was back in France.

And there were more opportunities to indulge in French food.  One Sunday, I stumbled across a French food festival going on in the Plaza Francia. I was so excited that I started babbling away in French at the information table.  The sight of so many familiar French favorites – crepes, onion soup, sandwiches on croissants and baguettes, macarons, madeleines, beignets – was overwhelming. I wanted to try everything, of course, but I had to stop after a beignet sampler (spinach; mushroom; shrimp; jambon/fromage), and a hearty wedge of tarte aux poulet et poirreaux (chicken and leek tart).  Fortunately for Elisa and Christian, the festival is held several times per year. 

French food festival in the Plaza Francia

Another European tradition that’s been adopted by the Argentines is the English high tea.  One rainy afternoon, Elisa and I treated ourselves to a very proper tea at the five star Palacio Duhau Park Hyatt in the Recoleta district.  The original building, dating back to 1934, was formerly the palatial private residence of the Duhau family.  In this extremely luxurious setting, the high tea includes a choice of tea, an assortment of goodies and a glass of sparkling wine, all for at a very reasonable cost. Don’t hesitate to include it in your itinerary if you’re going to Buenos Aires.  

Contemplating our high tea at the Palacio Doha Park Hyatt 

So far, I’ve described a lot of food that wasn’t all that different from what I would normally eat in the U.S.  But I was also seeking out food that would be less familiar and typically Argentine.  I soon realized that to appreciate the local food culture, I had to develop a greater tolerance for sugar, carbs, and meat. 

It was immediately apparent that Porteños love their sweets.  At home, I try to avoid sugar, but in BA, this was not easy to do.  For example, in my local supermarket, there was an enormous selection of yogurts.  However, every single one contained added sugar. Eventually, I managed to find sugar-free plain yogurt in a health food store although it was frequently sold out.  Also at my neighborhood supermarket, I had trouble finding something as seemingly simple as ground coffee sin azucar (without sugar).  Yes, that’s right.  Nearly all the ground coffee also contains sugar.

This preference for sweet tastes was obvious in all sorts of products.  If you compare a French croissant to its similarly shaped Argentine cousin, the medialuna (literally, half-moon), you’ll find the texture of the medialuna is denser and the flavor is much sweeter.  In fact, medialunas are generously sprinkled with crystals of sugar.  Eating one will leave you with very sticky fingers. 

The epitome of sweetness is dulce de leche.  A thick, milk-based caramel-tasting paste, dulce de leche, or DDL, appears everywhere in Argentina.  It’s included in cakes and pastries, other desserts, in crepes, on waffles and pancakes.  Here’s the DDL section of my local supermarket.  

Dulce de leche in the supermarket 

You can several DDL flavors in any heladeria (ice cream shop).  Just two examples are DDL with chocolate chips and DDL with brownie pieces – just in case you need a little more sugar in your diet.  By the way, the ice cream in Argentina was divine.  It’s not exactly gelato, and it’s not exactly premium American-type ice cream, but more of a cross between the two.  

A small section of the ice cream flavors available at Via Vecchia heladeria

Decision making in a typical heladeria is difficult because of the abundance of flavors available.  In addition to the multiple DDL choices, there are at least five or six different varieties of chocolate, and a dozen or more fruitier options.  My favorites were the mousse de arandanos (cranberries) and the mousse de maracayu (passion fruit).  I also discovered a treat called a cubanito sold in the popular Freddo heladerias throughout the city. It’s a cigar-shaped roll made of sugar cone wrapped around an ice cream center and covered in chocolate.  It costs 30 pesos (about $1.75), and I’m craving one right now. 

The quintessential Argentine pastry item must be the alfajor.  Alfajores are basically sandwich cookies – two round pieces of shortbread with a thick layer of dulce de leche in between.  They usually come individually wrapped.  Around 9:30 one morning, I made a special trip to the legendary Café Tortoni, established 1858, just to have coffee and an alfajor. 

A classic Buenos Aires snack at Café Tortoni

You can get alfajores plain, or covered in chocolate or meringue. After trying all kinds, I decided that I prefer my alfajores naked, except for a ring of coconut flakes. Sylvie likes all kinds.  In the photo below, she’s eating a double decker alfajor.  

Alfajores are yummy.

No, I don't need any help.

Carbs also form an important part of the Argentine diet.  For a number of years,

I’ve avoided potatoes (and other white carbs).  However, my resistance immediately crumbled with my first taste of papas rusticas.  They bear no resemblance to greasy French fries.  Rather, these are long thick wedges of tender potatoes, roasted until crispy on the outside and served with different sauces.  

We ordered papas rusticas whenever possible.

I also found a delicious new source of carbs in faina, a popular chickpea flour flatbread, covered with melted cheese and sweet cooked onions.  I could pick up wedges at any of the local empanada or pizza takeout places.  I’m tempted to try to make faina at home, especially because it reminds me of the Niçoise specialty, socca. 

Empanadas, of course, are a staple of the Argentine diet.  Add a salad, and you have a quick and easy lunch or dinner.  Before I came to Buenos Aires, I’d never seen so many varieties or so many shapes.  I discovered that the different shapes corresponded to the different fillings:  ham and cheese; chicken; carne (beef); gallega (Galician style, with tuna); humita (creamy corn); spinach and cheese; Roquefort; tomato, mozzarella and basil; onion and cheese.  It was fun comparing empanadas from several shops in our neighborhood. 

My foray into meat eating began with the ubiquitous choripan, chorizo sausage on a roll.  Cheap and tasty, choripan are sold everywhere in the capital city.  The first one I tried came from Gut, the inexplicably named take out place right across the street from Elisa and Christian’s apartment.  Based on that positive experience, I was willing to try some other forms of meat. With all the parrilla restaurants (restaurants specializing in grilled meat) in the city, it was hard to escape the tantalizing aromas around lunchtime. 

Meats grilling on the padilla at a Buenos Aires restaurant

The ultimate Argentine comfort food must be the provoleta.  Remember the yummy grilled cheese sandwich from your childhood?  Mmmm.  Now imagine it without the bread.  That’s right, just a thick round slice of cheese (provolone, I assume), grilled on both sides and served on a plate.  That’s your basic provoleta.  We never tried making it at home but we often ordered it as an appetizer in restaurants.  Sometimes it was simply garnished with tomatoes and fresh herbs, but it could also form the basis for a more complex dish.  In the second photo below, the provoleta is accompanied by apples soaked in malbec and topped with baby greens.  Don’t worry about your cholesterol level.  Just enjoy. 

A simple presentation of provoleta

A fancy presentation of provoleta

While there wasn’t a great diversity of ethnic restaurants in Buenos Aires, I was excited to discover a completely new cuisine, Peruvian-Japanese fusion, that has become very popular.  Elisa joined me for lunch one afternoon at Dashi, where we tried the classic Peruvian dish called olive octopus, an interesting combination of cooked octopus with olives, avocado and sweet potato.  We also really enjoyed a ceviche tasting.  Of the three different ceviche recipes, our favorite was a mixture of salmon, shellfish and sole with coconut milk, lime, onion, cilantro and corn. 

So many delicious flavors at Dashi

As you can see, I had a great variety of food experiences while living in Buenos Aires.  Even with all the extra sugar and carbs (not to mention wine) that I consumed, I maintained a fairly well-balanced diet.  Eating a big salad once a day and preparing a simple, healthy breakfast at home probably helped.  Much to my surprise and delight, after eating my way through BA for a month, I came home weighing one kilo less than I did at the beginning of my trip.