Offbeat Argentine Cuisine

I must admit that adjusting to the Argentine cuisine has been a little more difficult that I had hoped. I'll just go ahead and blame it on the pregnancy, but deep down, I may just be a pickier eater than I pretend. So, first an overview, then I'll show you some of our interesting little discoveries.

Breakfast (roughly 8-10:30 am) is generally a cafe con leche and a pastry. They serve 'medialunas,' which are like croissants, but a little more dense and with a sweet glaze on top. I am definitely a medialuna fan, so breakfast is generally a good meal for me, if I get myself out of bed and ready for the day early enough. Lunch (roughly 12:30-2:30 pm) seems to be usually a sandwich, empanadas, tortas (like quiche), pizza, or Milanese (thin cuts of beef or chicken that's breaded and fried). Their sandwiches are funny because they're often just ham and cheese, or ham and cheese and tomato, or a big slab of Milanase between two pieces of bread. Now, those two pieces of bread could be white bread, with the crusts removed, or pita-like bread, or giant baguettes. So, for instance, the other day I got a Milanese sandwich, which was a huge piece of breaded and fried beef put in between two baguette slices. There were like four inches of meat hanging off either side of the baguette slices. And, of course, there are no condiments or add-on things like lettuce. Meat and bread. Maybe meat, cheese, and bread. Dinner (8:30-10:30) seems to bring on more variety, including steaks.

Perhaps the frustrating part is the general lack of variety. Nearly every restaurant in our posh little neighborhood serves basically sandwiches, empanadas, pizza, and Milanese. Or you can go to a steak-house. Sometimes an American just wants a salad bar or a yummy soup, you know? Or a chicken salad, mmm.

Oh, speaking of salads, most of the 'hip' restaurants that want a foreign sort of edge offer salads, but they're often very offbeat salads. Take this Waldorf salad, for instance, at which I am looking quite skeptically in this picture. Yes, yes, the main ingredients in a Waldorf are apples, grapes, celery, walnuts, and mayo, but this was literally chopped up apple, slathered in mayo, and sprinkled with walnuts and hearts of palm. I don't know. I felt like I basically was just eating mayo-covered apples. It was weird.


And delving even deeper into the weird, we have mate. Chad was brave enough to order this traditional beverage. They bring you a mate cup, filled with dried leaves (same idea as tea), a metal straw, and a thermos of hot water. You pour the hot water over the mate leaves, let it steep, and then drink with the straw. Repeat. The straw has slits that essentially act as a filter. Mate is extremely popular all over South America, and they generally drink it when socializing in groups. They'll often even pass the mate cup around to share. Well, Chad offered to share with me. Let me tell you, mate is gross. I'm sorry to sound so closed-minded or whatever.
I bet, though, that if you steeped alfalfa and hay in hot water and drank the liquid from a straw, you'd basically be drinking mate. Yep, alfalfa and hay. Maybe some plain ole grass mixed in, too. Just take a good, close look at it. Ick. But Chad drank all of it, so maybe it's just me.

Perhaps I spent too much time describing the oddities of Argentine cuisine. We actually had a delicious meal just this weekend at an estancia an hour outside Buenos Aires. I'll post about that next time, so we can balance out the picture of Argentine cuisine.

Addendum: Omg, they make mate soda. Some of you lucky folks just might be getting a six pack of this for Christmas.

La Boca

At 'the mouth' ('la boca') of the Riacheulo River, is a brightly colored neighborhood, whose history began in the 16th century. Juan de Garay, from the Basque Country of Spain, sailed to the South American continent on a number of exploratory expeditions and founded cities along the way, including the 'second' foundation of Buenos Aires in 1580. (I'm not entirely clear how you can found a city for a 'second' time, but so the history websites say...)
The area of this second founding was primarily a port that sustained a neighborhood of humble houses and grocery stores. When ship trade increased in the 1800s, the neighborhood expanded with immigrants, who asked the shipyards for leftover paint to color the exterior walls of their houses and businesses.

The colorful neighborhood became famous, and, as with all interesting poor areas of town, it soon attracted artists and bohemians. By the end of the 1900s, La Boca had shifted to a tourist attraction with a rich history, although the hints of poverty are still visible, and the locals still recommend only visiting La Boca during daylight hours.

If the building had a fresh coat of paint and served cafe con leche or sold souveniers, we assumed it was part of the tourism industry. If the building was older with chipping paint and was only accessible through the narrow alleyways, we assumed it was a remnant of the immigrant/bohemian neighborhood.

The buildings with creepy plaster figures hanging out the window we avoided. This particular creeper is a prostitue, commemorating the brothels that used to be (perhaps still are?) a part of La Boca.

La Recoleta Cemetery

Rather than a field of grass with tombstones, La Recoleta cemetery is filled with rows side-by-side small stone houses, each with a door and a name plate of the family, an altar, decorations, coffins for one or two of the family members, and a basement to hold the rest of the family members. Apparently there's no rule or tradition about who gets to be in the top floor coffins and who gets sent down to the basement.

Most of the altars had crucifixes, vases (some with flowers, some without), and candle holders, but a few had little toys and memorabilia. It seemed like the living family was supposed to come by (with their keys to the tomb-houses) to put in flowers, dust, and clear out the cobwebs. Obviously, some were better kept up than others.

Now, there were plenty of odd people like me who would wander around just to see what people put in their tomb-houses (that's my word for the funny looking graves), but the real tourism draw is Evita's tomb-house.

Evita was the wife of President Peron, who was both elected three times as president and took control of the government through military coup. Since Eva was his third wife, she only remained in the lime light from 1946 till her death in 1952. She was loved by the Argentine people for her charity works, feminist philosophy, and support of women's suffrage. No surprise that hers was definitely the most decorated tomb-house.

Here are more pictures of La Recoleta Cemetery.