What We've Been Eating and Drinking

One of the main reasons to travel is you get to eat different kinds of food. So, what have we been eating?

The food of Buenos Aires is generally simple and straightfoward, with the favorite dishes being grilled meats, pastas, empanadas and tortas, and pizza. Argentines are a bit like Italians: they like their own cuisine very much and will only hesitantly try something new. And nothing spicy!

Here's a sampling of where and what we've been eating and drinking.

--La Cholita is a great little place on Rodriguez Peña just off Av. Santa Fe. We've eaten there twice, grilled steaks and sausages. We ate there a lot last year, and I'm sure we'll eat there again before we leave.

--Romario is a popular local pizza chain. We've eaten here twice, too, getting a large mozarella and pepperoni pizza each time. Each pizza comes with about a pound of melted, gooey cheese.

--El Establo is a well-known parilla (grill) near the center of town, at the corner of Paraguay and San Martín. More grilled meat and sausages, and I love their batatas fritas (fried sweet potatoes).

--Tandoor has some lovely Indian food (and a lovely website besides), quite tamely seasoned for us but adventurously so for the porteños. Tandoor is on Charcas a few blocks from our Spanish class, so we stopped here for lunch on the walk home. Terri had pollo saag, a spinach and chicken curry, and I had a delicious ku ku pak, chicken curry with cilantro and coconut milk.



--Cumaná is a popular place next door to La Cholita, similar prices but very different food -- no grilled meat, but lots of interesting oven-cooked dishes like casseroles, lasagna, and empanadas. Today at lunch Terri had canelloni stuffed with swiss chard and cheese, and I had an open face hot sandwich with proscuitto, tomatoes, and basil.

The restaurants here have very reasonable prices for drinks. For example, a half liter of house red wine at Cumaná or La Cholita is A$11, or less than $3 US, or you can get a liter of Stella Artois, my favorite beer in Buenos Aires, for A$15, or less than $4 US.

There's a limit to how much we can eat out. Some nights we go over to Mazzeo to get some homemade pasta and sauce to bring home, or we'll get some empanadas and a torta at San Jose around the corner.

We are always asked, can you drink the water? Yes, of course. The tap water has a lot of chlorine (like Fort Worth's) but just let it sit out on the counter in an open bottle overnight and it's fine, even tasty.