About once a month I do something that I shouldn’t. I check the currency exchange rate between the US and Argentina. When I was there last summer, winter there, it was $28 to the Argentinian Peso. Today, it is $42 to the Peso. When you can get one of the best steaks you will ever have, and likely more than you can eat, for $14 and a good bottle of Malbec for $10 at one of the best restaurants in town, in fact, one of the World’s Best 100 Restaurants, it makes you want to catch the next flight to Buenos Aires.
In the world of food in Argentina, the Parrilla stands as the most iconic. The sheer quantity of Parrillas throughout the country is staggering. There are so many of them that you would think that no other kind of restaurant could open; pretty much all Argentinians would be fine with that too. When you get the quality of beef they do and have true grill masters that know how to cook and season a perfect steak every time, why would you eat anything else? That being said, there are many other types of restaurants in Argentina, but if you only have a short stay, you would be well served to try as many Parrillas as you can.
Parrilla is a word that refers to the grill that the steak is cooked on. It has become synonymous with the steakhouse and inside of each of them you will find a wood burning parrilla and usually out in the dining room so that you can watch the steaks being cooked and savor the aromas from the wood burning grill. It is as much of a show to watch as you see the masters at work adding more coals and seasoning the steaks. They move with the timing and precision of a machine as they turn out perfectly cooked steak after another.
Nearly every meal centers around grilled meat of some sort and even though the entrees are going to be hearty, that is no reason that you shouldn’t start the meal off with some rich and fat laden blood sausage, or if that is too rich for you, you can have the lighter option, a few hunks of sweetbreads, or some grilled provolone. I think I saw some seafood once or twice on a menu, but assumed it was a joke. While the people of Buenos Aires are called Porteños, people of the port city, for a city in such close proximity to the ocean, seafood is not as common as in most port cities.
There are several things about food in Argentina that surprised me. The first was that they hate food with any heat—I mean any spicy heat. Even if you go to an authentic Indian restaurant in Argentina, you have to have a long back and forth with the staff, explaining that you really do want it hot, they seldom believe you, and even after thinking you have convinced them, what you get could barely be called spicy. Imagine a Lamb Vindaloo that had the heat intensity of a tandoori chicken. The same goes for Mexican food. Taquerias have popped up in Buenos Aires, but even the most popular and authentic restaurant’s atomic sauce’s hottest ingredient was the tomato. If you go to a grocery store, you won’t find any hot peppers, not even a jalapeno.
There were so many amazing bone-in rib eyes that were too big to eat in one sitting that I often had the leftovers for lunch. I searched high and low for the months I lived there for horseradish. Mission never accomplished. I found a source for a good brioche bun and dreamed of making a sandwich out of the leftovers with a horseradish mayonnaise on the aforementioned bun. I never could.
The thing that surprised me the most in Argentina was how incredibly good the french fries were—everywhere. I don’t mean a few places had good fries, and everyplace there has fries, but I never had a bad version. I never had a coated buyout fry like we get at 99% of the restaurants in the US. Every Parrilla I went to had amazing fresh cut fries, many of which tasted like they were cooked in tallow, which would make sense as a country that eats as much beef as they do should have plenty of the stuff laying around. If you think back to the amazing fries McDonald’s had pre-tallowban, you will get the idea. The inside of the potato like pillowy clouds surrounded by a golden crisp exterior, rich and decadent from the fat, paired perfectly with the right amount of salt. Go for the beef, but do not skip the fries. You can diet when you get home.
I heard a rumor about a restaurant that was serving a salad, but I never found it. The quality and ubiquity of beef in Argentina is like nowhere else I have ever been. There are other restaurants that branch out from that style of cuisine, there are even world class tasting menu style restaurants like Tegui and Aramburu that are well worth a visit, but no trip to Buenos Aires would be proper without a visit to a Parrilla. Any parrilla. For a list of my favorite restaurants in Buenos Aires, including some non-parrilla spots, check out the S4DF Buenos Aires Restaurant List and for more on the other Argentinian delicacy you have to try while there, check out Choripan: When a Hot Dog Grows Up.
