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Travel cage match: Santiago, Chile vs. Buenos Aires, Argentina (part 2: Drink)

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2 cities enter.  One city leaves.

Will it be Santiago, Chile – the home of enormous mayo covered hot dogs and some of the most impressive mountain views anywhere in the world?

Santiago Mountains image

or

Will it be Buenos Aires, Argentina -where you can (and more or less have to) eat steak 5+ times a week?

Buenos Aires City image

We spent 6 months researching–4.5 months in Buenos Aires and 1.5 months in Santiago–in an attempt to answer this frequently asked and extremely difficult question:  If you’re headed to the Southern Cone, which of these 2 great cities should you prioritize?

Last week we covered the food category and while Santiago had a strong showing and was far and away the winner on diversity of food options, we declared Buenos Aires the winner for the Food category overall – they may have limited menu options, but damn do they do them well.  Check out the full review of Buenos Aires vs. Santiago food.

We’re ready to move on.  Today’s category is…

2. Drink

This category is almost as important as food and despite bottles and bottles of intensive research, it is very difficult to declare a winner.  Let’s start with wine.

Category 1)  Wine:  Winner – Buenos Aires/Argentina  (though these are 2 of the best countries in the world to drink wine)

This is not really a Santiago vs. Buenos Aires thing, but rather a Chile vs. Argentina thing.  Both Argentina and Chile are deservedly proud of their wine traditions and more and more, they are gaining attention internationally for the quality of the wines they produce.  Both are pretty damn good and we had a rather fantastic (though for some reason, difficult to remember) time researching this category 🙂  By the way, if you are in Buenos Aires and like wine, you should do a wine tasting with Anuva – check out our original review on them for details:  Review of Anuva Wine tasting in Buenos Aires: Do it, you’ll thank us

Argentine wine tasting research with Anuva image

We like research

In both countries, most wine is grown right along the Andes with the largest regions being almost directly across the mountains from one another (Mendoza, Argentina and the many regions surrounding Santiago).  After visiting wineries in both of these regions and doing some additional research (Jen had to write a report for Spanish class on something…), we learned that while the regions are quite close geographically, being east vs. west of the mountains actually leads to some pretty significant differences in grape growing conditions – one of the largest differences being that on the Argentina side, the climate is quite a bit drier.  This and other differences lead to different types of grapes being better suited to one side vs. the other.  It’s why Argentina dominates global Malbec productions and is one of the only regions in the world to produces Torrontes and why Chile tends to export a broader array of both red and white varietals including the Carmenere which is largely exclusive to Chile.  Before we get into our sub-sub-category ratings, let’s start with some context on both regions.

Context

Argentine Wine Industry:

Argentina is currently the world’s 5th largest wine producer.  The vast majority of the wine produced in Argentina stays in Argentina – currently only somewhere between 20% and 30% is exported.  Up until the 1970s, Argentina produced more wine than pretty much any other country in the world.  They were apparently producing 22 tons per acre whereas most quality wine regions in France and California at the time were only producing ~2-5 tons per acre.  How did they do it?  Three words:

1)  Super

2)  low

3)  quality

Everyone used to have a big jug that they would go fill up every couple of days in the middle of town at a big wine keg type thing.  It was called “vino de mesa,” or “table wine.”  Back then, Argentines were drinking more wine per capita than any other country in the world (seriously, they were drinking something like 24 gallons/year/person on average vs. less than 1 gallon/person in countries like the US and UK), but virtually none of it was exported because, you know, it sucked.

It wasn’t until the 1990s that international wine experts started taking a closer look at Argentina.  After seeing the soil conditions, the lack of humidity, the lack of pests and the altitude, there began to be a lot of talk about the incredible potential Argentina had to produce top quality premium wines.  Slowly over the last couple of decades more and more of the industry has changed their practices away from mass produced low quality table wine to export-ready premium wine.  This has been largely driven by foreign investment.  When we were in Mendoza, we were told that back in 2002-2003 after the most recent Argentine economic collapse, there was an average of something like 3 new wineries opening every day as foreigners took advantage of low prices and saw an opportunity to make great wine.  This process still has a long way to go as they still only export a small fraction of the wine produced, but I think we can expect to see more and more Argentine wines in the international market in the years to come.  It is also worth noting, that the days of jug-wine are for the most part gone in Argentina and now even most of the wine produced for domestic consumption is quite high quality.

Bad Argentine jug wine

That said, we did experience some pretty bad jug wine up in Salta

Chilean Wine Industry:

Chile produces only a little more than half of the total wine that Argentina does and drinks only a small fraction of the wine that they produce; they export the rest.  In fact, they export 70+% of the wine that they produce which, despite the relatively small size and population of the country, makes them the 5th largest wine exporting country in the world (under France, Italy and Australia – Argentina is #8 at about 63% of the export volume of Chile).  It wasn’t always this way.  Similar to Argentina, the wine industry in Chile largely produced low quality wines for domestic consumption up until the 1980s.   Once they solved some political and economic issues, they recognized that they had the potential to turn wine into a big business, and they did.  Starting back in the 80s, they began using modern wine techniques from around the world and geared up their wineries to start producing great quality wines designed primarily for export.  They rapidly climbed the export rankings and continue to be one of the biggest exporters in the world.

You may have seen our earlier post on our visit to the Concha y Toro winery in Santiago – it’s the largest winery in Latin America and the 8th largest in the world.

Concha y toro wines image

You may recognize these labels... they are sold all over the world

Why am I telling you all of this?

I’m not sure really.  The important thing to remember is this… Chile is big in the business of exporting wine and Argentina is big on the tradition of making and drinking wine.  They both make great wine, but this context leads to some different outcomes.

Enough information, onto our totally subjective opinions…

Sub-category 1)  White wine – Winner: Chile (by a lot)

Argentina: Our experience was that Argentina focuses far more on red wine, and while we did find one Chardonnay that we liked, the vast majority of the whites that we tried there we thought were terrible.  Obviously this is subjective, but I’ve yet to hear anyone rave about a white Argentine wine nor have I ever seen one for sale in the US – if you have a different opinion, please let us know.  There is an exception to this… Northwestern Argentina is quite proud of their own unique white varietal known as Torrontes.  Many people talk it up as being a fantastic alternative to the more traditional varietals and the Argentines from the region (Salta) beam with pride whenever it is discussed.  We wanted to like Torrontes.  We really did.  Sadly, we could not.  After tasting several versions of it at a few of the wineries in Cafayate, the best way we can describe it is that it smells like very sweet dessert wine, yet somehow tastes like water.  It’s not that it’s bad, it’s just that it’s not good.

Chile: Chile has fantastic white wines.  Virtually every white that we tried there we thought was excellent and if you are ever staring at the 100s of bottles of wine in a liquor store wondering what Chardonnay to buy, your odds of picking a good one are pretty good if you grab pretty much anything from Chile.

Sub-category 2)  Red wine – Winner: Too close to call

This is too close to call.  They both have fantastic red wines.  Some of the Malbecs from Argentina are absolutely amazing (others taste like kool-aid) and Chile has some fantastic big Cabs, Syrahs and others.  We are going to take a pass on this one.  Suffice to say, you can acquire fantastic red wine in either country.

Argentine Wine tasting picture image

This is just a random yet classy picture of wine glasses that I thought fit well here

The difference is in how much you have to pay for it, which leads us to the next category…

Sub-category 3)  Value for $ – Winner: Argentina

Value for the money is a pretty important dimension in determining what wine you’ll actually be able to try wherever you go and a big part of the reason why I provided so much context on the histories of the wine industries in each country up front.

Chile: Prices in general are a bit higher in Chile than Argentina for pretty much everything at the moment (though, with ~30% inflation per year, Argentina is rapidly catching up – until the next economic crisis).  The difference in wine prices is remarkable.  The reason for this is that Chilean wine is for the most part produced for export and priced at export pricing levels – we often saw the same bottles of Chilean wine that we’d bought here in the US for sale in Chile at the same or higher prices.  It’s not that it’s super expensive, it’s just that it’s internationally priced.  Argentina is different.

Argentina: Argentina exports only a small fraction of their wine and that wine is often labels that aren’t even sold domestically, so when you go to buy wine in Argentina, you are confronted with prices that were designed entirely for the local, relatively low-income, wine-loving market.  The vast majority of the wines in any store are priced at AR$15-30 which is US$3-7.  The staple wine that we drank all the time in Buenos Aires literally cost ~US$4/bottle.  That wine was awesome, and a bottle of that quality would easily cost $15-20 in the US (or Chile for that matter).  The value got even better if you were willing to spend a little bit more… we took back with us a few extremely expensive (on Argentine standards) bottles of wine that are easily some of the best wine we’ve ever had (and when we were consultants, people used to give us some pretty fancy wine from time to time!) – these super expensive bottles cost ~US$20, I’d put them in the ~US$100 range for something of similar quality here in the US.  Another great thing is that it’s easy to experiment with different high-end bottles in restaurants as the mark-up tended to be only 10-20% over store prices vs. the 2-3x mark-up that is common in the US (Chile also had a high restaurant mark-up).

Awesome Argentine Wine image

So good AND so cheap! Just look how happy we are.

On value for $, Argentina is impossible to beat.

Sub-category 4)  Variety of new wines to try in-country: Argentina

There is no question that Chile has great wines, but because they export so much of their wine, the wines that you’ll see in Santiago are pretty much the exact same wines that you’ll see in the Chilean section of a wine store in the US.  I’m sure that there are wines that you have to be in the country to experience, but in general, you can sample most of the Chilean wines from pretty much anywhere in the world.

On the flip-side, the vast majority of Argentine wines are currently impossible to purchase outside of the country.  You can be certain that a trip to Buenos Aires will expose you to an awesome variety of wines that you’ve never seen before.

Category 2)  National drink:  Winner – Santiago (by miles and miles)

Chile: Chile’s national drink (other than Nescafe) is the Pisco Sour.  It’s made from Pisco which is a grape based liquor and varying forms of sour mix.  Often there is egg white put on top, but the Chilean version usually skips that part.  It’s important to note that Pisco Sours are also very popular in other parts of Latin America (most notably Peru), but the Chilean version is their own.  The Pisco sour has the remarkable quality of tasting almost non-alcoholic – kind of like lemonade – yet having the ability to absolutely knock you on your ass in a very short period of time.  They vary in alcohol content depending on the type of Pisco used, but at one venue we had one drink each at around 5pm and were not able to walk straight again for about 4 hours.  The girl we were with threw up upon walking out of the bar.  After one drink.  Three hours later, we still wished that we had thrown up wih her.  They are dangerous, but we love Pisco Sours.

Pisco Sours in Santiago image

Pisco Sours make us happy

Argentina: Buenos Aires has an obsession with a very special kind of liquor called Fernet.  It’s made out of grapes and a variety of spices.  It’s often mixed with Coca Cola.  We tried a Fernet and Coke one time while in Buenos Aires.  Despite the fact that it was mixed with a fair amount of Coca Cola we could not drink more than a few sips.  It was without question the worst tasting thing we have ever put in our mouths.  This is of course subjective; there are many, many people that claim to love this drink – we suspect this is merely a form of hazing.

Fernet image

Fernet makes us sad

Category 3)  Coffee:  Winner – Buenos Aires (unless you are looking for a little something extra with your coffee..)

It may seem odd to have a category devoted to coffee, but the coffee/cafe cultures in these two cities are so remarkably different, we thought it was worth mentioning.  For us, we preferred the leisurely cafe experiences in Buenos Aires, but to each their own as these are very, very different.   Here’s the deal…

Buenos Aires: Cafes are a big deal in Buenos Aires.  The strong Italian roots of the city are likely the reason behind the strength of the cafe culture.  There are usually several cafes on every block and for the most part, they all serve fresh ground, strong and quite tasty coffee.  The standard ‘cafe’ is actually what we would call an espresso shot in the US, but there are several variations involving more or less amounts of milk (e.g., cafe con leche, cortado, lagrima).  It’s all good.  Pretty much any cafe you go to will serve some cookies and a glass of water with every coffee you order.  The locals spend lots of time hanging out in cafes sipping their espresso and reading the news.  There is no such thing as a to-go cup… when you’re going to have coffee in Buenos Aires, you are going to sit down and drink it for as long as it takes.  That’s just how it’s done.   Coffee is a big part of the culture here and a good deal of pride is taken not only in producing top quality drinks, but also in providing a great cafe experience.  If you’re in a hurry, it can be pretty difficult to get a quick cup of caffeine in this city, but then again we found that we were rarely in a hurry in BsAs.

Buenos Aires Cafe image

Coffee, cookies and water

Santiago: The cafe culture is very different in Santiago.  There are 3 main differences:  Experience, quality and legs.

1)  Experience:  There are still many cafes, but for the most part they are designed for getting a quick cup of coffee rather than as places to leisurely hang out for a couple of hours.  In fact, a large percentage of the cafes downtown don’t even have seating… everyone just quickly drinks their coffee while standing at a bar.  We found that getting coffee was typically a 10 minute experience.  This is not really better or worse than the BsAs style, just different.  On top of that though, we also found that many of the cafes were favorite destinations of smokers and sometimes there was so much smoke billowing out of them that we couldn’t breathe.  Starbucks is actually doing quite well in Santiago and many of the people we talked to suggested that a big part of their success might be that they are one of the few non-smoking cafes.

Stand-up coffee bars in Santiago image

Stand-up coffee bar

2)  Quality of coffee:  For various historical reasons which we never quite fully understood, Chile has a national obsession with Nescafe instant coffee.  Upon ordering coffee, the default offering you will get even in a fancy hotel or restaurant will be an empty cup and a plastic single-serve container of Nescafe.  After which, they will offer to fill your cup with either hot water or hot milk.  While instant coffee can be convenient when you need some coffee and don’t have any alternatives, it seems odd to order coffee in a coffee shop and get it.  To be clear, you can definitely order an espresso drink if you’re in the right kind of place, it’s just not the standard-Nescafe is everywhere.

3)  Legs:  We covered the Coffee with Legs/Cafe con piernas phenomenon at length in a previous post (see it here:  Cafe con piernas = coffee with legs).  Coffee shops that are part strip club or even brothel are not representative of the coffee culture in Santiago, but are certainly a significant part of it.  If you are into this, then the incredible number and variety of cafe con piernas establishments in downtown Santiago may well trump all of the other drink categories and make Santiago the city for you.

coffee with legs cafe rio santiago image

Ah the memories...

Overall winner for best Drink:  Buenos Aires (barely)

There is plenty of good drinking to be done in both cities.  If you’re all about trying new red wines that are really cheap and good you should prioritize Buenos Aires.  If you prefer white wine, go Chile.  If you like drinking gasoline, go to Buenos Aires and try some Fernet.  It really depends on you.  We happen to love red wine and were blown away by the incredible value we got in BsAs on awesome wine, so despite how much we miss Pisco Sours, we’re going to award this category to Buenos Aires by a slim margin.  We can’t declare a strong overall winner in this category, but hopefully we’ve at least given you some good context to draw your own conclusions.

Quick recap on the cage match thus far…

Round 1)  Food – Buenos Aires came out strong and won round 1 with best overall food despite Santiago’s superior variety

Round 2)  Drink – Buenos Aires barely edged out Santiago driven by the incredible value for your money on unique red wines

So far Buenos Aires has Santiago on the ropes, but the first two categories have definitely played to Buenos Aires strengths, so we expect big things from Santiago in the coming rounds. Next week, we’ll get into round 3 and tackle the issue of which of these two cities would be more attractive to live in as an expat.

Do you agree or disagree?  Let us know what you think!

Disclaimer:  Keep in mind these are just our opinions based on our personal experiences and we’re very happy to have people disagree as this is quite subjective – if you do disagree, please speak up and tell us why!

Travel cage match: Santiago, Chile vs. Buenos Aires, Argentina (part 1: Food)

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2 cities enter.  One city leaves.

Will it be Santiago, Chile – the home of enormous mayo covered hot dogs and some of the most impressive mountain views anywhere in the world?

Santiago Mountains image

or

Will it be Buenos Aires, Argentina -where you can (and more or less have to) eat steak 5+ times a week?

Buenos Aires City image

We spent 6 months researching–4.5 months in Buenos Aires and 1.5 months in Santiago–in an attempt to answer this frequently asked and extremely difficult question:  If you’re headed to the Southern Cone, which of these 2 great cities should you prioritize?

Research wasn’t easy.  We worked relentlessly day in and day out to try as many restaurants, go on as many day trips and explore as many on and off-the-beaten-path attractions as possible.  We’ve also done an extensive wine comparison.  I don’t know how we stayed motivated.

There are five high-level categories to this competition, each of which will be thoroughly analyzed in it’s own post with a winner declared:

  1. Food – Quality, diversity and overall dining experience
  2. Drink – For these countries, this one is mostly about the wine
  3. Livability – How easy would it be to live here as an expat
  4. Visit-ability – How fun are these places to visit
  5. People/Culture – What are the people and culture like and how open are they to foreigners

Obviously, much of this is very subjective and our opinions should be taken with a grain of salt.  You may agree or disagree with our conclusions; our hope is to provide enough context such that you can draw your own conclusions based on your own preferences and priorities.  Our other hope is that this series of posts becomes a useful reference so that next time someone asks us the question of which city to spend more time in we can just tell them to read this rather than rambling about it for an hour–sadly, the rambling will likely continue.

Let’s do this.

Today’s category is…

1. Food

We like food.  We like food a lot.  Trying authentic foreign cuisines is one of our very favorite things about travelling, so this category is a pretty important one in our minds.  Let’s break it down:

Most crave-worthy:  Winner – Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires: We’ve been back in the US for a few months now and we haven’t bothered eating steak.  We know that it could never measure up to the Buenos Aires version that you can get at places like El Estrebe, Dada and a number of other stellar places (see our where to eat in BA post for recommendations).  My mouth is watering just thinking about it.  Beyond just the steak, we can’t forget the empanadas…. oh, the empanadas.  The empanadas were unbelievable.  Also, Provoleta is missed.  We crave these things often and if/when we go back to visit BA, food will be one of the biggest reasons.

Argentine steak image

Want

Santiago: It’s not that the food was bad in Santiago, it was actually pretty good.  That said, we certainly don’t crave anything we had there.  Food is not as core to the culture of Santiago as it is to Buenos Aires.  It’s fine, but it’s unlikely to blow you away.  However, if you are a fan of giant hot dogs, Santiago is the place for you.

Chilean hot dog completo image

Yep

Best food diversity:  Winner – Santiago (by a landslide)

Buenos Aires: Virtually every restaurant in Buenos Aires has an identical menu.  As we’ve written about previously, there are really only 5 types of food in Buenos Aires (steak, pizza, pasta, empanadas and Dulce de Leche).  They do those 5 things quite well, but that’s pretty much all they do.  If you head into some of the more touristy areas you can find a handful of foreign cuisine options, but not many.  Despite the high quality, after a couple of weeks the monotony of eating the same thing every day does get to you.

Buenos Aires food pyramid image

Sometimes it's possible to combine all 5 food groups in one meal

Santiago: Santiago, on the other hand, is full of all kinds of different cuisines.  Peruvian and Japanese are probably the two most common (and quite good), but we also had some of the best Indian food we’ve ever had, there are lots of Chinese restaurants (which the locals strongly suggest avoiding), Seafood, Italian, American, French, you name it.  From a dining perspective, Santiago offers far more international options than Buenos Aires.

Peruvian ceviche image

We do kind of miss the Peruvian ceviche

Best dining experience:  Winner – Buenos Aires (if you have a few hours)

Buenos Aires: In BA, dining is definitely an experience–whether you want it to be or not.  For dinner it is usually a 3+ hour experience.  This is not (usually) the result of bad service, but rather is intentional.  In BA, dining isn’t really about eating, it’s about being with your friends and family.  Service is usually quite efficient and impressively formal up until they finish bringing your food; after that, you will have a very hard time tracking down your server to get your bill.  This is by design.  They would never want to give the impression that they were rushing you out and fully assume that you will spend another hour or 2 sitting around the table after you finish eating.  That’s simply how it’s done.  At first, this can be a bit unsettling for those of us from countries that tend to be in more of a rush.  After you get used to it though (and assuming you are not in a hurry), it’s pretty awesome to allow yourself to fully experience a meal with your fellow diners.

Santiago: In Santiago, the dining experience was far more similar to what you would find in the US.  Servers are interested in turning tables fairly quickly and in some cases may even clear your dishes and bring your check while you’re still chewing your last bite (update:  we have it on good authority from someone who has spent much more time here than us that this is usually not the case and perhaps we were going to the wrong places.  Either way though, they definitely value efficiency more in Santiago and meals were much quicker relative to BA) Great if you’re in a hurry, but otherwise nothing special.  I’m sure there are exceptions, but even/especially the fancier places we tried were not that memorable.

Overall winner in the food category:  Buenos Aires

Santiago is no slouch, but dining is core to the entire culture in Buenos Aires and as long as you eat meat and can handle the lack of diversity, they do it extremely well.  So, if your single top priority in choosing between these two cities is food (and you like meat), you should definitely prioritize Buenos Aires.

As important as it is though, food is unlikely to be the only factor in your decision making process, so stay tuned for future posts to see which city wins in the remaining categories!

Do you agree or disagree?  Let us know what you think!

Warning: Buenos Aires apartment scam

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UPDATE 1/9/2013:  To avoid any confusion, this article/warning is NOT about the rental company DiscoverBA.com.  We were recently contacted by the owner there who told us that this post has a high Google rank for “DiscoverBA review” due to a few similar keywords.  While we don’t have any experience with DiscoverBA, they seem like a legit company and the scam below is definitely not referring to them.

—————————-

A reader recently emailed us asking if we could help publicize the story of how he got scammed out of getting his deposit back when renting an apartment in Buenos Aires in an attempt to shut-down the scammer (which has been remarkably successful thus far–read on…) and to help other people avoid becoming victims.  We hate scams (and in Argentina, there are MANY),  so we were happy to oblige.

Everything is done in cash in Buenos Aires (because no one wants to pay taxes), the police are corrupt and crime is high so you have to be extremely, extremely careful no matter what you are doing–being taken for your deposit on a rental apartment is, unfortunately, incredibly common unless you go with one of the reputable companies (which may cost a bit more, but you are guaranteed a great place and you will get your deposit back, so in my opinion, well worth it).  Check out our guide on how to rent an apartment in Buenos Aires for some tips/tricks to minimize your risk and some mini-reviews of several agencies that we worked with.

The scam

Below is a reprint of the story that was just sent to us:

My six-month stay in Buenos Aires ended on a bad note this past Tuesday when I was scammed out of the deposit for the apartment I had been renting for three months starting in August. The apartment owner’s name is Valeria de Santos and the unit in question is located in Recoleta, at Larrea 1393 at the corner of French, apartment #PB2. I found it on Craiglist and jumped at the chance to live in a nice area for a relative bargain, though in hindsight renting through an agency or through a referral may have been the smarter way to go.

I had told Valeria that I needed to check out at noon because a cab would be waiting to take me to the airport. She arrived late with her mother and inspected the apartment to make sure it was in good order (it was). Valeria said that my deposit was waiting for me at her mother’s office, which was supposedly just a few blocks away, off of Pueyrredon and Santa Fe. She asked if her mother could get in the cab with me and get dropped off by her office where she would retrieve the deposit and return it to me.

I had dealt directly with the mother before when I first occupied the apartment so I didn’t find her suggestion odd. But I now realize that I made a number of mistakes. First, I returned the keys to Valeria before getting my deposit back. Secondly, I let my guard down and didn’t think to accompany her mother to the “office” after we dropped her off at the corner, opting instead to wait for her in the cab with my luggage.

The mother disappeared down the street and never returned. I waited 45 minutes and called Valeria a dozen times before telling the driver that we needed to leave because I couldn’t miss my flight. I called her numerous times at the airport and e-mailed her with no response. I was finally able to reach her Wednesday, when she assured me that she would wire the funds to me via PayPal that same day. Well, it didn’t come through, and I’ve been calling and e-mailing her since with no luck. My messages to her have gotten angrier and angrier to the point where I threatened to hop on a plane the next day and come looking for her — which I would be crazy enough to do if I was confident I could track her down.

The strange thing is that Valeria and her mother were a pleasure to deal with during my three-month stay in the apartment, responding to my calls and e-mails and showing up to address any problems promptly. It’s bizarre that they would pull something like this off at the very end.

I’ll continue to call and e-mail and harass Valeria and her mother in any way I can until I get my money back, and perhaps I’ll find myself in Buenos Aires sooner than I think. But for now, I’d just like to defame her on every relevant forum I can find and bring awareness to what I went through. Hopefully you’ll learn from my mistakes.

It’s really too bad that this happened, but I will say that to get out of Buenos Aires after 6 months and only be scammed out of $200 is actually pretty darn good.  In our 6 months, we encountered taxi scams (fast meter), counterfeit money scams, tour guide pricing scams, and were almost taken for $400 on the deposit for our first 2 week apartment.  Good times.

The entertaining part

The above story was actually posted on the local Buenos Aires expat forum.  Within about 5 hours, there were 100+ responses by the expat community.  Many of them decided to use some clever online detective skills to determine that this woman and her mother had been running scams on tourists in BA for years – not only via apartments, but also through a fake Spanish school, a fake tour guide business and many others.  They also found her real name, address, phone number and other personal details (including where she has claimed to be an Oxford trained lawyer on Wikipedia among other places).

As the expats diligently uncovered more and more information about this woman, strangely enough all of the websites and references to her many ‘businesses’ started disappearing from the internet.  Clearly many of the expats are software developers though and they were able to backup pretty much everything and rehost on alternate off-shore servers.  The thread on the forum showing this whole thing unraveling is long, but extremely entertaining and worth taking a look at:   http://baexpats.org/expat-life/11930-stay-away-apartment-rental.html

A summary of what was uncovered

One of the members on the expat forum put together a nice summary of many of the facts uncovered which I’ve reposted below.  Note:  this isn’t interesting reading, I’m just reposting it so that there is yet another website that has all of these keywords in hopes that any future potential victims do some googling before doing business with her.

So, in summary this thread is a warning about Florencia Marina Daud (aka Florencia Daud Othacehe). It is strongly advised that you avoid any kind of business dealings or financial transactions with her. If you do enter into financial dealings with her it is recommended that you proceed with extreme caution. She has disappeared with the deposits of several visitors to the city who entered into temporary rental agreements with her.

Florencia Daud
DNI: 26260151
CUIT: 272626015115 (click on the green arrow to see a picture from the website http://www.nic.ar/entidades.html)

She has gone under the names Valeria de Santos and Veronica and often uses the username flormarina on the internet.

Her mother has used a name similar to Maria Eugenia

She has had various businesses registered to her addresses:
Discover BA
Florencia Marina Daud (discoverba@hotmail.com)
+1.5411480527
Fax:
Av Pueyrredon 2261
Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires 1119
AR

D&A Daud & Asociados
Av. Pueyrredon 2261 2nd floor
BUENOS AIRES – ARGENTINA
tel/fax +54-11-4805-2742

Recoleta Spanish School
Pueyrredon 2261, 2nd floor
Entidad Registrante: Florencia Daud
País: Argentina
Actividad: Otra
Domicilio: Chenaut 1967 4 A
Ciudad/Localidad: Buenos Aires
Provincia: Buenos Aires
Código Postal: 1426
Teléfono: 4776 3188
Fax: 4776 3188

D&A Daud & Asociados Buenos Aires, Argentina
Address : Av. Chenaut 1967 4 A, Buenos Aires 1426, Argentina
Phone No. : +5411-4776-3188

According to the Colegio Público de Abogados de la Capital Federal, she’s licensed to practice law here in Capital. Click the green arrow for a picture from the website.

Other phone numbers she has used:
15-5346-4957
15-5259-1319

And email addresses:
sweetmarina2007@hotmail.com
valeriadesantos@hotmail.com

She has advertised her apartments on craigslist
She appears in wikipedia
She has an account on EchangeVacances.com (click for pictures)

and has had various personal and business web pages of her own most of which have been taken down since these accusations have appeared:
http://www.buenosairesguest.com/
http://florenciamarina.blogspot.com/
http://daudlegal.com/

If you have been a victim of a scam as a visitor you can contact the following authorities:

Defensoría de Turista, 4302 7816. Av. Pedro de Mendoza 1835 (Museo de Bellas Artes “Benito Quinquela Martín”) La Boca.
Mail: turista@defensoria.org.ar

Comisaría del turista
Av. Corrientes 436
0800 999 5000 / 4346 5748
mail: turista@policiafederal.gov.ar

If you have returned to your country and are unable to retrieve funds owed to you by identifiable persons as a last resort you can tell them you are going to contact AFIP (the revenue authorities) to have their tax records reviewed:
http://www.afip.gov.ar/contacto/
Centro de denuncias : 0800-999-2347

There is also another thread about the activities of Florencia Daud on TripAdvisor

In Summary

Be careful in Buenos Aires (and/or wherever you are traveling) and if something like this happens to you, let the online communities know about it – they may or may not be able to help you directly, but they can certainly help get the word out so that it’s harder for scammers like this to be successful.

Thanks again for the tip!

Trip report: San Pedro de Atacama (part 2)

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Our vacation from a vacation from a vacation in San Pedro continues – here’s what we did days 3 and 4, as well as our thoughts on a few restaurants and hotels in San Pedro.  (P.S. Day 4 includes the most incredible natural landscape we’ve ever seen . . . and we get around.)  If you missed it, you can read Part 1 of our trip review here.

TOURS/EXCURSIONS

Day 3: Lagunas Cejar and Tebenquiche

Tour company: Layana

Price: CLP10,000/person (~US$20)

Time: Afternoon trip leaving San Pedro at 3pm (~4 hours)

What we did: The big attraction for this tour is going out to Laguna Cejar, where the water is so salty that you float.  A lot.  This sounded cool, so we signed up.  What we didn’t hear before we went was that the water is cold.  Really, really cold.  We had been looking forward to relaxing in the water, given that it was a hot, sunny day, but all that changed when our toes touched the laguna.  Ryan ended up getting in (briefly) and verified that you do, in fact, float more than in regular water.

Ryan floating in Laguna Cejar image

Ryan's the crazy one who floated in the freezing cold water

Then, we hopped back in our tour bus and headed nearby to Laguna Tebenquiche for sunset.  This place is really cool because you can get some incredible reflections of the volcanoes in the laguna – Ryan really liked this and took a lot of pictures.

Sunset at Laguna Tebenquiche image

Us at Laguna Tebenquiche

A nice touch by the tour company was that they brought along snacks and pisco sours – yum!  Some of our tour-mates skipped the sunset photo op and instead focused on taking pictures of themselves in various poses with the pisco sour bottle . . .

Verdict: This was a chill, relaxing afternoon activity – nothing spectacular (actually, the sunset was pretty incredible) but it was something fun to do close to town that didn’t mean being on a bus all day long.  One strange thing with this tour was that the guide didn’t speak English at all during the tour.  Not that he couldn’t speak English (he busted out some English with us later) but just that he didn’t bother asking if anyone on the tour wanted English.  With other tours we were on, the guides always said everything in both English and Spanish.  We didn’t say anything because we’d already heard enough about the volcanoes and lagoons on the other tours, but seemed strange to us that this was the approach.

See the rest of our pics from this trip here: Lagunas Cejar and Tebenquiche.

Day 4: Lagunas Altiplanicas

Tour company: Cosmo Andino

Price: CLP35,000/person (~US$70)

Time: Full day trip leaving San Pedro at 7am (~11 hours)

What we did: This was a day that involved a lot of sitting in the van, as many of the places we visited were really far away.  We started at the Laguna Chaxa, which is in the middle of a massive salt flat – actually the 3rd largest in the world (after Bolivia and apparently Utah – who knew?).  This was different than the salt flat we visited near Salta, Argentina, in that it’s an incredibly rugged landscape that looks more like rocks than the smooth white field we saw in Argentina.

Salar de Atacama image

Yep, that crinkly, rocky looking stuff is salt

The big attraction here for most people is the flamingos that hang out in the lagoon.  They were cool, but really, really far away – see?

Flamingos at Salar de Atacama image

Those are flamingos

Luckily, we have a really good zoom on our camera.

Flamingos up close image

They look just like the yard decorations in Florida!

We’d been to the (very good) zoo in Santiago the week before and seen flamingos from about 5 feet away, so we were less impressed than others in our group.

After breakfast at the first stop, we hopped in the van for a ~2 hour ride to 2 big lagoons at really high altitude.  They were kind of pretty but (in my opinion) not worth the hours in the car.  And, this was essentially just a photo stop – when we got there, we walked along a set path, then got back in the van.  Not exactly adventure travel.

Path at lagoon image

Please do not stray from the path

The stop that made this trip worthwhile, though, was at the Salar de Talar (Talar salt flat).  Apparently Cosmo Andino is the only tour company that goes there – we arrived and were the only sign of civilization anywhere around.  And this place was pretty incredible – the most spectacular thing we saw on the entire trip.

Salar de Talar image

It really looked like that - like somebody airbrushed an entire mountain

The colors that existed here were absolutely amazing.

Salar de Talar image

Seriously, you should check out our album - this place was incredible

We hopped out of the van and walked for a good 40 minutes along the edge of the lagoon – it was cold and windy but worth it because the view was so amazing. Check out our panoramic video and listen to the wind:

After the lagoons, we stopped in 2 small towns to walk around a bit.  The second one, Toconao, was really charming – enjoying sodas in the main square before heading back to San Pedro was a great end to the day.

Toconao plaza image

Such a cute town square!

Verdict: This tour was worth it for the special stop at Salar de Talar – this was one of the most spectacular things we’ve ever seen in nature.  After seeing it, we don’t understand why this isn’t the main attraction on the tour and the other tour companies don’t even go there at all.  Cosmo Andino was a little more expensive than other tour companies but totally worth it.  Also, our guide was great – Oscar was born of Chilean parents in London so speaks perfect English and Spanish . . . although we weren’t expecting the Cockney accent from a big Chilean dude, so took us a minute to adjust.  He was great and made the tour really relaxed and fun.

See the rest of the pics from our trip here: Lagunas Altiplanicas.

RESTAURANTS

La Estaka

This place is AH-MAZ-ING.  Better than pretty much anywhere we’ve eaten in Santiago.  It’s 2 long rooms (indoors, which is important during cold desert nights – some of the other places are outside), both with fireplaces that give it a cozy atmosphere.

La Estaka image

Cozy inside La Estaka when it's freezing outside

They usually play lounge music, and one night we were treated to an (actually very good) quartet playing traditional local music.  The food here is really, really good – over the 4 out of 5 nights of our trip that we ate here, we tried both salmons on the menu (one served with an incredible, cheesy quinoa risotto), the chicken curry and the steak.  There were some mix-ups in the service – on two separate nights, we tried to order the salmon with risotto and instead were served the other salmon.  Not quite sure how or why this happened, but the serving staff handled it really well and recovered nicely, comping us drinks to make up for it (we like drinks).  Aside than this, the service was fabulous – very attentive, very friendly and generally made us feel welcome.  By our last night there, the manager knew us, knew how we liked our salmon cooked and knew we’d want extra pebre with our bread (it’s so good!!!).  This place is on the more expensive end for San Pedro (mains CLP8,900/US$17), but well worth it in our opinion.

La Estaka outside image

We LOVE this place!!

Adobe

We think this place is owned by the same company as our beloved La Estaka.  They’re known for the fire pit they have in the middle of the dining area where people hang out at the end of their long day tours.  We had lunch here but avoided it for dinner – the fire pit is awesome, but it’s outside, and we were cold enough when we sat INSIDE!!  We had a salad and a pizza here, and both were good but not out of this world.

Blanco

What an embarrassment of a restaurant.  This is a swanky-looking place in all white right on the main drag.  It’s trying really hard to be sleek and modern, but just not getting it done.  We’re fine with basic food when we’re traveling, especially when we’re in the middle of a desert.  We just don’t like when a place pretends to be high end, charges really high prices, serves bad food and has a wait staff with an attitude.  Our waiter here was probably the worst we’ve ever had.  He completely forgot about our drinks and looked perturbed when we asked about them 15 minutes later, took our order wrong and then argued with us when we asked him to correct it when our food was delivered.  The chicken was raw in the middle and, when it came back from the kitchen the second time, was overdone and crunchy.  We came really close to walking out but ended up staying because we had a just-opened bottle of wine on the table.  It was this experience that sent us back to La Estaka for the remainder of our trip.

Tierra Todo Natural

We stopped in to this cool little open-air cafe for coffee (real espresso, not Nescafe) one afternoon and again for lunch another day.  The espresso was good, the sandwich I had for lunch was fresh but a little bland and the tacos Ryan had were really good.  We were a little confused by the taco menu at first (they have one that’s  a “guacamole taco” which consists of just a tortilla and guac . . . hmmm), but the meat tacos were really tasty, especially with cheese added.  Service is a little slow but friendly – we’d go back.

WHERE WE STAYED

San Pedro has a handful of really high-end places to stay (think US$300-600/night) and a bunch of simple hotels and hostals; we opted for the latter.  We made a reservation in advance to stay at the Takha Takha and then moved to the Hostal Katarpe after our first night.

Takha Takha Hotel

This is located right at the end of the main road running through town.  We arrived late at night and we happy that they had our reservation.  It was freezing, so we decided to upgrade to a room with heat, which cost CLP47,000 (~US$95).   The room was pretty, done in adobe.  But we were less-than-thrilled with the king bed (actually, 2 twins pushed together with a giant bump in the middle; could feel the individual springs when we laid down; one half of the bed (mine, lucky me) had a plastic potty guard mattress pad that crinkled any time we moved) and the bathroom that had 2 thin-as-paper closet doors.  The next morning, we saw that the compound was under construction and had building materials strewn everywhere – not that pretty.

Takha Takha image

The construction area was right outside our room

Also, no wifi – not a necessity, but nice to have.  For what we were getting, we thought the place was significantly overpriced, so we found another place the next morning and moved.

Hostal Katarpe

We found this place after wandering in to ~10 different hotels/hostals near the main street.

Hostal Katarpe image

See - isn't it cute?

At most of the places we checked, prices were pretty consistent, but this place was a great value!  Our room was set near the back of the property (quiet!!), was very simple and clean and HAD HEAT and wifi!!!  All this for CLP30,000/night (~US$60); note – we opted for the no-breakfast option for CLP5,000 less since so many of the tours leave first thing in the morning and include breakfast.  The place also has a central patio that was great for relaxing and taking in a bit of late-afternoon sun.  The woman who runs the place is very friendly and helpful, and we really enjoyed staying here!

Hostal Katarpe patio image

Ryan chilling at the patio after the crazy geyser tour

OVERALL

This was a great trip, and we’re so glad we were able to fit it in while we’re here.  It was really relaxing (other than the 4am geyser trip) and as different from Santiago as is possible.  We got a ton of amazing pictures (see them here), at least a few of them will end up framed on the wall (someday, when we have a wall to call our own again).  Yay travel!

Trip report: San Pedro de Atacama (part 1)

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We decided to take a trip to get out of the Santiago smog for a few days and quickly decided on San Pedro because (1) it’s the only major attraction that’s to the north, and it’s still too cold to go south and (2) it’s really neat.  San Pedro is a small town in the middle of the Atacama desert in northern Chile, the driest desert in the world.  We learned while we were there that there are actually places in the desert where rain has never, ever fallen.  Whoa.

The desert is beautiful shades of pink and orange that go on forever with some really funky rock formations, lagoons, lots of volcanoes and a giant sand dune we got to run down (without having to walk up it first – key benefit to the tour we took; see below).  This was such a great, chill getaway from Santiago (our vacation from vacation from vacation), and we’re really glad we went.  We went for 5 days and had an awesome time, and here’s what we did that made it awesome.  This post covers our first two days there – details on our last 2 days coming soon!  (Note: Lots and lots of travel details below for those of you planning trips to San Pedro; for the rest of you, focus on the pictures.)

TOURS/EXCURSIONS

There are a ton of tour companies lining the streets of San Pedro, pretty much all of them offering trips to the same attractions.  We’d done some research beforehand and heard horror stories about a few of them (e.g., they’d cancel your trip then not give you your money back and just wait until your flight or bus left and there was nothing you could do about it) and noted a few that had consistently good reviews on Tripadvisor.  Our first morning there, we went around and talked to a few of them and booked our excursions for the next few days – some have discounts if you book multiple tours with them or pay in cash (but you have to ask; they’re not just going to offer it up).  Here’s what we decided to do:

Day 1: Valle de la Muerte and Valle de la Luna

Tour company: Cactus

Price: CLP10,000/person (~US$20)

Time: Afternoon trip leaving San Pedro at 3pm (~4 hours)

What we did: We did this tour our first afternoon in San Pedro.  It’s the closest to town and seems to be the most common tour – pretty much everybody does this one.  We received a recommendation to go with Cactus Tours because they’re a bit more active than the others, and we really liked this.  Our guide (Pablo) was really cool, made the trip fun and relaxed.  We first drove out to Valle de la Muerte and walked for ~40 minutes across the desert.

Hiking in Valle de la Muerte image

Pretty crazy landscape!

We ended up at the top of this massive sand dune where people were sandboarding.  We then had a lot of fun running down it.

Sand dune image

Those people had to walk up first - ha ha HA!!!

And the landscapes were amazing.  Besides the really cool sand dune, there were also these crazy pointy rocks – how did they get that way????

Valle de la Muerte view image

Crazy landscape (along with the obligatory volcano)

Then we headed over to Valle de la Luna (so named because the landscapes are so strange it feels like you’re on the moon) and saw another really big sand dune, along with the Three Marias, which are 3 natural rock columns that somebody thought looked like Maria.  Except that now there are only 2 – some tourist knocked one of them over.  We ended the afternoon watching sunset over the valley.

Valle de la Luna sunset image

Sunset in the desert is beautiful

Verdict: This was one of our favorite trips, for the combination of actually getting out and doing some walking (many trips involve sitting on a bus for hours and then getting out and taking pictures of things, then getting back on the bus), the great guide that we had and the beautiful sunset.  Not to mention that it didn’t involve getting up before the sun was up (you’ll see what I mean in a minute).

See the rest of our pics from this trip here: Valle de la Luna photos.

Day 2: Geysers de Tatio and hot springs

Tour company: Cosmo Andino

Price: CLP25,000/person (~US$50)

Time: Brutally early morning trip leaving San Pedro at 4am (~8 hours)

What we did: This is a really popular tour in San Pedro, and most people would say it’s a can’t-miss, so we signed up and did it our second day in town.  First, we set our alarm for 3:45am and waited outside our hostal for the bus in the dark at 4am.  The drive up to the geysers takes about 1.5 hours, and we arrived while it was still dark.  The geysers are at 13,700 feet, so it’s REALLY cold up there.  We were bundled up in all the clothes we had (and some more we’d borrowed from friends in Santiago) and were still freezing.  And not just the “I’m uncomfortable” type of freezing; this was more of the “I can’t feel my hands and am somewhat concerned my toes may need to be amputated” type of freezing.  I grew up in Alaska and I’ve never been this cold.

Once we arrived, we had a cold breakfast and Nescafe outside the van as the pitch black was turning to morning dusk.

Breakfast at Tatio geysers image

Breakfast in the dark and freezing cold

Our guide then took us around and told us a bit about the geysers and then gave us some time to walk around on our own.  The geysers were kind of cool – lots of steam coming up from the ground, and one or two that would occasionally blow water up into the air.  But we couldn’t really figure out why we had to be there so early in the morning.  The explanation we got was that you couldn’t see the steam as well as it warmed up.  But to us, it seemed like the geysers looked just as cool (and maybe better) when we left around 8am (after the sun had finally come up).

Tatio geysers image

That's a fake smile (if you couldn't tell) - I was just pretending to have fun

We then drove out to a hot springs.  Cosmo Andino goes to a different hot springs than most of the other tours, so we were the only ones there.  It was basically a stream at the bottom of a hill filled with really warm water (actually boiling in some places – we didn’t go in to those places).  It was nice, but it was still very cold, so the idea of stripping down to our skivvies was less-than-enticing for us and we ended up only dipping our feet in.

Hot springs image

Pretty neat, but too cold to strip down

On our way back to San Pedro, we stopped seemingly in the middle of nowhere, where our guide (Oscar) showed us a bunch of endangered cacti (including one that was ~200 years old!) and then led us to a hidden waterfall around the side of a hill.  It had finally warmed up, so we were able to enjoy the waterfall and a little bit of sunshine along with the waterfall.

Jen hugging cactus image

It turned out that hugging the cactus was a bad idea

Verdict: For me, this tour was not worth getting up at 4 in the morning and nearly freezing to death for; if we had it to do again, I would skip it (or at the very least hire a private guide who would take us a few hours later).  The geysers were ok, but we just can’t see why the 4am start is necessary.  And I was so uncomfortably cold for at least the first 4 hours of the tour that for me it wasn’t worth the pain.

See the rest of our pics from this trip here: Geysers de Tatio.

Day 2: Astronomy adventure

Tour company: Space Star Tours

Price: CLP15,000/person (~US$30)

Time: Evening trip leaving San Pedro at 8pm (~2.5 hours)

What we did: While we were there, we learned that the Atacama desert is one of the best places for astronomy in the world, due to the high altitude and 350+ clear days per year.  What’s going to be the largest observatory in the world (ALMA) is actually being built not far from San Pedro.  A group of astronomers have set up an outdoor observatory where they basically give a tour of the night sky.  We were picked up in town around 8pm and driven to the observatory, around 15 minutes away.  We started in a round room lit by a single candle with a glass ceiling so you could see the stars.  Our host for the evening, a Canadian astronomer (I think named Les) who lives in San Pedro, was incredible.  He started by giving us a basic introduction to astronomy (really interesting, not dry at all), where we learned for one thing that Pluto is no longer considered a planet – who knew?

Then we went outside, near the 10 massive telescopes they have set up essentially in the front yard.  Les had the coolest laser pointer we’ve ever seen – crazy green and looked like it was actually reaching all the way to the stars.  He used this to point out the Southern Cross, Milky Way, Venus (we saw planets!!), Mars (more planets!) and even Jupiter which could all easily be seen with the naked eye, all the while explaining really fascinating historical discoveries.  He then introduced us to what was on each of the telescopes, and then we had time to walk around and look in each of them.  We saw 4 of Jupiter’s moons!!!  And we saw a star formation that looks like a butterfly.  And lots of other cool things.  We ended the evening by heading back into the candlelit room for hot chocolate and Q&A with Les.  He was really fascinating to talk to, had very thoughtful and detailed answers for all the questions but also had a skill for making it easy to understand.

Atacama desert night sky image

Sadly our camera does not have a long enough exposure time to take good pictures of the stars... they were spectacular

Verdict: This was definitely our favorite “tour” of the trip.  It’s definitely different from the other tours that are offered, and it’s like nothing we’ve ever done.  I hadn’t expected seeing the stars and planets to be so interesting, but this was really a fabulous experience!!!  Our camera is not good at night, so check out the Space Star Tours website for cool photos and more info – this is a must-do trip if you are in the area.

To be continued . . .

See how much fun we had in San Pedro?  Be sure to check back for Part 2 tomorrow – including the coolest landscape we’ve ever seen!!

Update:  Part 2 is posted:  Trip Report:  San Pedro de Atacama (part 2)

Where to eat in Buenos Aires: A few of our favorite BA restaurants

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Now that we’re settled into Santiago, it’s time for some reflection on our favorite places to eat in Buenos Aires.  While we may have mentioned from time to time that the food choices in Buenos Aires can be a bit repetitive (cycling through the 5 major food groups), there are definitely some amazing places to eat in the city.  In addition to the things listed in Time Out and on Trip Advisor, we’ve been lucky enough to find a few lesser known restaurants that we think are awesome, and you just happen to be lucky enough that we’re willing to share them with you!

Note: We’ve indicated the price we usually pay for the two of us, typically including wine (we like wine) and either an appetizer or dessert; we’ve noted exceptions.  Take these as rough estimates, not absolutes.

  • El Estrebe: If you’ve followed our blog, you know that we LOVE El Estrebe.  We found it around the corner from our apt. in Recoleta and noticed that it was always packed (after 9pm anyway – don’t dare try to go to dinner before then in Argentina).  They also have a couple of fabulous wines for around AR35-40 (that’s US$10) by bodega Viñas de Narvaez, on the first page of the wine menu (our faves are the malbec and the syrah).  Read our review here and our photo essay here, but suffice to say that this is probably the one restaurant we’ll miss the most when (or if) we go back to the US.
    • Neighborhood: Recoleta
    • Cuisine: Parrilla
    • Price: ~AR 200 – we usually share a steak since they’re massive (see below) but have 2 appetizers, dessert and a bottle of wine
    • Best for: Dinner

      Dinner in Buenos Aires: Perfectly cooked Argentine beef image

      Incredible bife de lomo from El Estrebe

  • Don Julio: Another great parrilla, this one located in Palermo.  It’s a classic, and classy,  kind of place – great service, great wine list, fabulous meats.  Another parrilla in the neighborhood is really popular with tourists (La Cabrera) but we think this is much better.  Try the Flecha de los Andes malbec – awesome.
    • Neighborhood: Palermo Soho
    • Cuisine: Parrilla
    • Price: ~AR250-300 (the above-mentioned wine is ~AR100, bumping our total up a bit)
    • Best for: Dinner

      Don Julio image

      Us with our favorite bottle of wine at Don Julio (yes, we know we look like we've had too much)- sometimes they'll let you sign it and they'll put it up on the wall

  • Dada: This one is a bistro located in centro, near Florida street.  The space is a little funky and casual with only about 10 tables, plus a bar.  They have amazing beef dishes (the ojo de bife is our favorite – amazingly flavorful – they actually appear to use seasoning it which doesn’t happen much in Buenos Aires and may be considered cheating…) but also a bunch of other good stuff, including a langostine risotto.  Smaller menu than most places, which we’ve found to mean that they do all of it well, rather than much of it poorly.  Call ahead for reservation, especially if you’re going on the weekend.
    • Neighborhood: Microcentro
    • Cuisine: French bistro
    • Price: AR250
    • Best for: Lunch, dinner

      Dada Buenos Aires image

      Funky, low-key place with amazing food!

  • Pizza Piola: Trendy environment, often playing techno or other clubbish music, and really good thin crust pizza – not only the typical Buenos Aires pizzas, but more creative modern cuisine style as well (think California Pizza Kitchen, but better).  Two of our favorites are the Carbonara and the Avandaro.  Best to get a reservation Thurs/Fri/Sat.
    • Neighborhood: Barrio Norte
    • Cuisine: Pizza
    • Price:  ~AR120 (~AR50 for a large pizza, AR20-30 for a small)
    • Best for: Lunch, dinner

      Pizza Piola image

      Thin crust, proscutto, brie and arugula - yes!!!

  • Pizza y Espuma:  If you want a good set lunch with pasta or a simple pizza, this is a good bet.  We stumbled across this place on our walk home from Spanish school – they have a couple of locations, including Palermo Viejo and Recoleta.  They also have pretty much the only white wine in all of Argentina that we really like, and it’s their house wine – San Felipe.  It comes in a funny short, fat bottle, and you can sometimes find it in the grocery store too.
    • Neighborhood: Recoleta, Palermo Viejo, others
    • Cuisine: Pizza and pasta
    • Price: AR80-100 (lunch price; variance based on whether we order wine or not – we highly recommend a bottle of wine for lunch)
    • Best for: Lunch (good fixed menu options)

      Pizza y Espuma Palermo Viejo image

      Location in Palermo Viejo - 2 levels, with plenty of TVs for football (and we think a rooftop deck too)

  • Cumana: This is a Buenos Aires institution that draws tons of locals and tourists alike.  They’re famous for their empanadas and cazuelas (stews/soups), and also happens to be the site of my unfortunate run-in with mondongo.  As such, we love their empanadas and some of their stews, but just be careful what you order.  There’s often a line out the door for this place during the lunch rush or dinnertime, but we’ve had better luck with a late lunch, around 2ish.
    • Neighborhood: Recoleta
    • Cuisine: Traditional Argentine
    • Price: AR100 or less
    • Best for: Lunch, dinner

      Cumana restaurant image

      Cumana (in Recoleta) sometimes has a line down the street of locals and tourists alike waiting to get in

  • La Morada: Not exactly the greatest ambiance, but this is our go-to empanada delivery place.  They have carne suave as well as carne picante (thank god for a little spice, finally!!), as well as some awesome caprese empanadas (we think of these as appetizer empanadas).
    • Neighborhood: Recoleta
    • Cuisine: Empanadas
    • Price: ~AR50 for a dozen (empanadas only, no drinks–usually covers us for 2 dinners)
    • Best for: Delivery (dinner)

      La Morada Buenos Aires image

      After much searching, our favorite empanada place in our neighborhood

  • Miranda: We tried this place for lunch soon after arriving in Buenos Aires on the recommendation of a friend (see our full review here) – good decision!  Every time we’ve gone, this place has been packed with businessmen and trendy Palermo Hollywood-goers (you know, the ones who leave their sunglasses on indoors).  The set lunch options here include an appetizer (try the chorizo or polenta), a main dish (we especially like the lomo sandwich and chicken kebab with tower of grilled vegetables) and drinks (includes house wine- yay!!).  That’s a LOT of really good food for not that much.  We’re guessing dinner’s pretty good too, but we’ve never been since the lunch option is such a good deal.
    • Neighborhood: Palermo Hollywood
    • Cuisine: Parrilla
    • Price: ~AR90 (lunch with wine)
    • Best for: Lunch, dinner

      Miranda parrilla Buenos Aires entrance image

      Only go here if you're hungry and you like meat

  • La Fabrica del Taco: Having come from California, we’re used to Mexican food being plentiful and cheap, and thus ate it around once a week before we came to South America.  Turns out, Mexican is hard to come by here, but this place makes some awesome (and pretty authentic) tacos, as well as good guac and pico de gallo (try saying that with a Buenos Aires accent and not laughing).  Margaritas are expensive (like most mixed drinks in Argentina), so we usually stick with beer or sodas here.  When we get that craving for good Mexican and food with a little heat, this is where we go.  Just be prepared for the kind of creepy collection of Mexican wrestling masks covering the walls . . .
    • Neighborhood: Palermo Soho
    • Cuisine: Mexican
    • Price: ~AR120 (AR12-15/taco, 1-2 should fill you up)
    • Best for: Lunch, dinner

      La Fabrica del Taco Buenos Aires Palermo image

      Just wait until you get inside . . .

  • Cluny: This is our fancy place where we go when we want to pretend like we can still afford the dinners we used to buy when we had paychecks.  It’s a beautiful, elegant space with fabulous service – we’ve been lucky enough to have the same server, Marcelo (and ironically, the same table) every time we’ve been.  It’s been described as “modern Argentine” as well as French, but we just call it delicious.  After trying a number of different things on the menu, our absolute favorite is the mushroom risotto topped with a incredibly flavorful hunk of lamb – best we’ve had anywhere, not just in Argentina.  Extensive (and somewhat expensive) wine list.  Great for a special evening out.
    • Neighborhood: Palermo Soho
    • Cuisine: French/Argentine
    • Price: ~AR300 (includes ~AR100 bottle of wine)
    • Best for: Dinner

      Cluny restaurant Buenos Aires image

      You can sit on the couches, or they have regular tables and a loft upstairs

  • La Salamandra: This is one of our favorite cafes, located in Palermo Soho.  The company is actually a producer of high-end dulce de leche that they sell in their cafe as well as in grocery stores throughout the country – it’s good.  They also make their own fresh mozzarella and use it in lots of their dishes – stuff like grilled vegetable salad, foccacia sandwiches and fresh quiches, definitely not your standard Argentine fare.  And if you order a coffee, they serve it with a ceramic spoon full of their dulce de leche!!
    • Neighborhood: Palermo Soho
    • Cuisine: Cafe, sandwiches, salads
    • Price: AR80 (no alcohol)
    • Best for: Brunch, lunch

      La Salamandra Buenos Aires image

      Be sure to order a coffee after lunch so you can try their fabulous dulce de leche

  • Lo de Mateo: This is another neighborhood parrilla that we stumbled across one afternoon while wandering around Recoleta.  We’ve been for both lunch and dinner, pasta and carne, and our favorite is the pasta lunch menu.  They have an awesome scarparo sauce – a red sauce with various types of onions, a touch of cream and then a bit of pesto in the middle – great with their stuffed pastas.  And the lunch menu includes dessert – their flan is my favorite.
    • Neighborhood: Recoleta/Palermo Viejo (it’s right on the line)
    • Cuisine: Pasta and parrilla
    • Price: AR80 (lunch, no alcohol)
  • Best for: Lunch, dinner
    Lo de Mateo image

    Nothing too fancy, just really good pastas and flan!!

    Any other favorites out there??

Santiago, Chile is awesome; let’s live there!

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We like Chile a lot!!

So much so, in fact, that we have added a new “Chilean Adventure” category to the blog and are going to go live there for a month starting on Friday (2 days from now).

I was there for a few days in ~2002 and remember absolutely loving Santiago.  Back then, I was shocked at how modern and sophisticated it was and just loved the energy.  Jen and I had always planned to get over there and check it out while down here in South America, but over the last 4 months of living in Buenos Aires and constantly hearing from everyone here how dull and boring Santiago is, we almost didn’t go (seriously, people in BA tend to really talk smack about Santiago–we are beginning to develop an understanding of why and will explore further in future posts).  We are so glad that my sister coming to visit provided us with a compelling reason to make the trip!

As you may know, we had been trying to figure out what to do with ourselves for the next month and been tentatively planning to fly up and check out Ecuador and Columbia, but the pricing is crazy–the last straw was when we realized it would actually be cheaper to fly back to San Francisco first and then buy flights to Quito/Bogota/Cartagena from there than it would be to buy them from Buenos Aires (by the way… did you know that you can often get tickets from Miami to Columbia for under $100??)  So, we  were left  unsure what to do next that would be feasible with our budget (like a fine wine, unemployment becomes more complex over time), but lucky for us, Chile is awesome!  Santiago seems extremely live-able, refreshingly different than Buenos Aires, affordable, a good base for some travel and exciting–sign us up!

So what makes Santiago so awesome?

Thing 1:  The insanely ridiculous mountains

Seriously, if you haven’t been there, you can’t understand how crazy this is.  The photos don’t even come close to doing it justice, but I’ll try…

Andes mountains around Santiago, Chile image

We literally didn't see the mountains for our first few hours in town because we weren't looking high enough. You have to crane your neck back. Seriously.

The city itself is at an altitude of only ~1,600 feet above sea level, the mountains that surround it on ~3 sides and are extremely close get up to 21,555 feet – that is a difference of ~20,000 feet in altitude (~4 miles straight up) that takes place just outside the city.  For comparison, if you have been to Denver and thought that the Rockies looked impressive from there, know this:  The city of Denver is already at an altitude of ~5,200 feet and the very highest peaks in the Rockies (not really visible from the city) are around 14,000 feet – only a difference in altitude of ~9,000 feet.

So basically, imagine the view of the mountains from Denver and then move the mountains closer and add ~2 vertical MILES to them and you’ll have something similar to the view of the Andes from Santiago.  Crazy?  Yes.

Titanium Tower in Santiago Image

That is a pretty tall building. Looks pretty small compared to the 4 miles of vertical mountain behind it...

Santiago, Chile Andes views images

Seriously, look higher--those aren't clouds

Thing 2:  The culture and people

The culture of Santiago is very different from Buenos Aires in many ways.  I’ll write more about this in the future after we’ve spent more time there, but there are several things that jumped out at us right away:

  • Safety: The first night we were there, we saw people all over the streets walking around in business clothes carrying laptop bags.  This would never happen in Buenos Aires, even during the day.  If the locals have a backpack in BA, they leave it unzipped so that it’s obvious they don’t have a laptop in it.  This alone gave us an immediate impression that the city is significantly safer–this perception only grew over time.
  • Police presence (related to safety):  There are Carabineros (Chilean police) everywhere and the people seem to enjoy talking with them.  We asked around and were told that not only are they NOT corrupt, but they are consistently rated as the most trusted and respected institution in the country.  Suffice to say that the police are generally held in a slightly different regard in Buenos Aires.
  • Friendliness: People were SO friendly!  Virtually every person we met went out of their way to be nice to us and chat with us for awhile.  They seemed genuinely curious about us and proud to share their country with us.
  • Cleanliness: The city is unbelievably clean!  The sidewalks don’t have holes in them, the subways are super modern, the buses are quiet and don’t have huge trails of black smoke billowing out of them.  It’s very impressive; and it’s not generic either… they definitely have a style all their own, they just like it clean.
  • Efficiency: Things just work well.  They have good systems in place and clearly seem to value efficiency–this is exceptionally rare in Latin America and, while there may be pros and cons associated with valuing efficiency, it certainly was a refreshing change of pace for us.
    Santiago subway sign image

    This sign basically means something like: " For a nicer subway, please stay to the right to make it easier for everyone." In Argentina, walking is more like playing a game of chicken at all times.

    All of the above and other things left us feeling that Santiago is a place where we could really enjoy living.  It’s likely less of a tourist destination than Buenos Aires is (as BA is very much geared towards leisure activities), but it felt more the kind of place where you could have a real life.  Obviously, nowhere is perfect though, and it will be interesting to see how our perspectives of it change over time.

Thing 3:  The seafood

Chilean seafood platter image

That's what I'm talking about

Chile has a lot of coast line.  That means a lot of fish.  While we’ll likely miss the Argentine beef, we are very excited to diversify our diets a bit.

Chilean fish market image

Lots and lots of fish, and some other stuff...

Chilean King Crab image

This is Chilean King Crab. It will F you up.

Thing 4:  Proximity to amazing coastline

We’ll write a separate post detailing our trip to Valparaiso on the coast and will certainly be visiting  more coastal cities in the month to come.  Just know that within a ~1 hour drive from Santiago, there are views like this:

Valparaiso view of the Pacific image

This is from a patio in Valparaiso--not a bad view if you're into oceans and stuff

Vina del Mar, Chile image

Off in the distance is Vina del Mar, a very popular beach vacation destination

Thing 5: The fantastic artwork

We are big fans of trying to buy local artwork when we travel–especially paintings.  We have had trouble finding much that we liked over the last several months, but Chile really delivered.  In Plaza de Armas (a big plaza in the middle of Santiago), every day there is a large group of local painters selling their wares (and in many cases painting new ones as well).

Plaza de Armas Santiago painters image

See, lots of painters. Why don't you ever believe me??

We splurged a bit and ended up buying 4 spectacular paintings to send home with my sister (they were ~$40 each!).

Plaza de Armas Santiago painting 1 image

Yeah, he painted that, we bought it 🙂 He actually wasn't finished with it yet when we bought it, so we watched him put all of the finishing touches on it. Also bought another one that goes well with it. Great paintings and really cool guy--he gave us his home phone number (I told you they were friendly!)

Plaza de Armas Santiago painting 2 image

We bought the one on the bottom, Ashley got the one on the top. We'll match! The guy in the middle is the artist--everything of his was gorgeous... we're lucky that one of his others wasn't dry yet otherwise we would have spent another $100. (he also gave us his home phone number)

Plaza de Armas Santiago painting 3 image

Got that one in the middle... Had to wait until the next day for it to dry. Very excited about it. Now that we own 4 paintings, I think we have officially become Chilean art collectors--we should get business cards...

Thing 6+:  ??

I’m sure we’ll keep finding more exciting things over the next month as we begin our Chilean adventure, stay tuned…

Thank you!!! Also, we wanted to offer up a special thanks to our new best friends in Chile  who we met through Trip Advisor and this blog (we’ll leave out their names to protect the innocent).  Their suggestions for places to stay, things to do, etc. were invaluable and we loved meeting them and exploring a bit of Santiago off the beaten track together. Thanks so much, we look forward to another round of Pisco Sours and some good Chilean empanadas!  🙂

Lots more pictures in our Santiago album:  Santiago photo album

The Buenos Aires City Zoo is full of surprises

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Either they have been doing some extreme experiments in genetic engineering down here, or South American animals are just very different.  To be fair, the zoo did not seem all that well maintained, so it’s very possible that the animals are escaping frequently and doing some of their own ‘genetic engineering’ if you know what I mean.

In reality, there are at least 2 reasons why this zoo is worth checking out:

1)  The crazy, crazy animals

2)  The fact that many of the crazy, crazy animals roam free throughout the grounds rather than being confined to a cage

Let’s start with a few of the crazy animals (which also happen to be roaming free):

Exhibit A:  Duck + Turkey = Durkey?

Buenos Aires Zoo Turkey/Duck Image

Duck? Turkey? Durkey?? And no, this is not a one-off weird looking duck, there are tons of these running around and they all look the same

Exhibit B:  Beaver/Gopher/Hedgehog = BeapherHog?

Giant Hedgehog thing image

This is kind of like a giant hedgehog...

Buenos Aires City Zoo Gopher thing image

...except that it has webbed feet in the back, bright orange teeth and an attitude.

Exhibit C:  Our personal favorite, the Rabbit/Deer = Dabbit?

Buenos Aires City Zoo: Rabbit/Deer Image

What are you???

Buenos Aires City Zoo: Rabbit/Deer 2 image

They are decently big and they run free all over the zoo. They seem a little skittish, but friendly. And very, very weird.

The above three animals (Durkeys, BeapherHogs and Dabbits) are all over the zoo, just kind of hanging out.   Other animal hybrid creations apparently are less friendly and need to be kept in cages.  For instance…

Exhibit D:  The Tapir

Buenos Aires City Zoo: Tapir Image

Tapir = cross between anteater and wild boar? He looks sad--it might be because he's so weird looking.

Buenos Aires City Zoo: Tapir 2 Image

Seriously, what are you???

Exhibit E:  These guys

Buenos Aires City Zoo: Weird guys Image

No idea... kind of like the rabbit/deer things crossed with the giant hedgehog things. You may recognize the guy in the front as the actor that played Mr. Beaver in The Chronicles of Narnia movie

Exhibit F:  Anteater thing

Buenos Aires City Zoo: Anteater thing Image

I think you are an anteater, but I have no idea. What I do know is that you could very easily wear a traffic cone as a helmet.

Buenos Aires City Zoo: Anteater thing 2 Image

Nice piece of tail

Exhibit G:  Satan goat

Buenos Aires City Zoo: Satan goat image

Do not mess with this goat, it will haunt your dreams

Exhibit H:  These guys

Buenos Aires City Zoo: Baboon things Image

And on the seventh day, god had some extra spray paint to get rid of...

In addition to having animals that you’re unlikely to have ever seen before, there are some animals that would be normal-ish except that they seem to have gone a bit crazy.  For example:

Exhibit I:  Smiling Llama

Buenos Aires City Zoo: Smiling Llama Image

He has lots of personality...

Buenos Aires City Zoo: Smiling Llama 2 Image

...or possibly is just unable to close his mouth due his abnormally large lower teeth

Exhibit J:  Flaccid Camel

Buenos Aires City Zoo: Flaccid Camel Image

I swear, this has never happened before...

Exhibit K:  Acro Elephant

Buenos Aires City Zoo: Elephant Image

Hard to capture in a photo, but this elephant attempted to perform a head stand for a good 3 minutes. He almost fell down a few times. Then he started running around his pen erratically (often backwards). Could have had to do with the roaring lion that was next door, or he is just crazy.

There were lots of other more normal animals as well of course like lions and tigers and birds and stuff.  You can check out the rest of our photos in our photo gallery:  Buenos Aires City Zoo Photos

Just because the lemurs and the baby hippo were particularly entertaining we took a couple of videos:
Lemur fight:

Hippo teeth:

Logistics

The Buenos Aires City Zoo is located in Palermo right next to the Botanical Garden–The main entrance is right next to Plaza Italia and it costs AR$15/ticket for a general entrance or a little more if you want to go into the special attractions (which didn’t seem to be worth it).  It’s fully outdoors, so probably not fun in the rain.

Also, they have a pretty crazy website with more info, lots of pics/videos and annoying music:  http://www.zoobuenosaires.com.ar/index.php

Verdict

It’s cheap, it’s centrally located and it has most of the craziest animals we’ve ever seen.  It’s always a bit depressing to see caged animals and some of these animals looked pretty unhappy, but overall we enjoyed the zoo far more than we thought we would.  It shouldn’t be on the top of your list of things to do on a short vacation here, but it’s a fun way to spend a few hours and we’d highly recommend it.

Anyone out there have any idea what some of those animals are?

Feria de Mataderos — You’re not in San Telmo anymore…

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Interested in something unique to do in Buenos Aires? Read on…

“Feria” is the word they use down here to refer to an open air market.  Most sell various arts and crafts as well as clothing, food and antiques.  There are several of them in varying shapes and sizes all over the city (and country).  Some are every day, some are only on certain days of the week.  Probably the most common one for tourists to check out is the Feria de San Telmo which is every Sunday and stretches from the center of the San Telmo neighborhood all the way to Plaza de Mayo across streets that are closed weekly for the occasion.  It’s usually pretty full of tourists, but we enjoy the San Telmo market… despite being quite crowded, it somehow manages to maintain a laid back vibe; this is much assisted by the fact that the vendors are super chill and I’ve never seen anything even remotely resembling an aggressive sales pitch–on the contrary, they are usually just hanging out and enjoying the day.  San Telmo is roughly a 10 minute cab ride away for us, or a 30-45 minute walk.  This is obviously far too convenient, so in our continued desire to get off the beaten path and find more stuff to do here in BA, yesterday we decided to go to the exact opposite side of the city of Buenos Aires to check out a different Feria:  Feria de Mataderos (Fair warning:  I’ve encountered very few Argentine websites that don’t begin with an annoying animated intro that includes music that plays automatically–this site is no exception)

Feria_de_Mataderos_map Image

For context, we live in the top right corner and the city is ~80 Sq. Miles; so this is a bit further than 'off the beaten path'

Why we went:

We were looking to do something a bit more adventurous than normal and see a different side of the city (literally), and this delivered.  There are several ways that you can get there by bus as detailed on their website, but we decided to splurge and take a cab.  The cab took nearly 30 minutes (I told you it was far), but still only cost about ~US$10.  It was pretty cool driving through so many different parts of the city that we hadn’t seen before.  It definitely changes as you get further out–still quite pretty, but the lower buildings and wider streets give it a more tranquil feel (at least as viewed through a car window, it’s entirely possible that some of these neighborhoods are somewhat unsafe).

Jen had heard at school that Feria de Mataderos was more traditional/authentic, far less touristy and would include lots of gaucho (~cowboy) type stuff, good food and maybe even some live shows.

gaucho-pants image

For context: According to Google images, these are "gaucho pants" -- apparently Argentine cowboys wore heels

Did it deliver?

The quick answer is Yes.

There was a main stage area where they did dancing shows and other stuff that seemed exciting  which was kind of cool.

Feria de Mataderos stage image

If that's not a live show, I don't know what is

And of course lots and lots of booths selling all kinds of stuff

Feria de Mataderos booths images

One of many streets full of vendors

Much of the stuff on sale was similar to the stuff you’d find at other ferias in the city, but this stuff seemed higher quality and more authentic on average (and was cheaper).

Feria de Mataderos booths with Argentina flags image

Argentina will never be accused of lacking patriotism

It also felt far more neighborhood-ie if that makes any sense.  While I’m sure we weren’t the only tourists there, it felt like the majority of the people there were from the neighborhood and turned out every Sunday which gave it a cool vibe.

Also, unlike San Telmo and many of the other ferias in the city, at Feria de Mataderos, there is lots of food!

Feria de Mataderos Choripan Image

That, my friend, is Choripan... Grilled chorizo cut down the middle, smothered in Chimichurri and served on bread; it's obviously very healthy

Feria de Mataderos Choripan with Jen Image

...Doesn't she look healthy?

You’re probably wondering where we found that Choripan…

Feria de Mataderos grill image

Some people say "where there's smoke there's fire," in Argentina it's more appropriate to say "where there's smoke, there's meat; lots of it"

Aside from lots and lots of meat (the above is only one of the multiple meat venues), there were also several booths with traditional foods from all over the country such as humitas and tamales, locro, empanadas and more.

Feria de Mataderos locro booth

This locro/empanada/tamale/other stuff booth had a very long line

This being Argentina and all, there were also tons of sweets–lots of fried pastries and some very fat women sitting behind freshly baked cakes that looked quite tasty (we wanted to get a picture of this, but were afraid of the aforementioned very fat women–we figured we could outrun them, but they seemed to have lots of friends).  Also, there were some candy type things:

Feria de Mataderos fruit candy image

This was some sort of fruit candy with popcorn--looked really cool, but we didn't eat it; also possible that someone just spilled a bucket of popcorn on their candied fruit

We had also heard that there would be animals.  We had heard right.

Feria de Mataderos Llama image

For instance: We were greeted by this rather smug looking and well dressed llama

Feria de Mataderos Llama backside image

Later he showed us how he really felt about us; disgusting, yet entertaining--both the event itself and Jen's excited desire to capture it on camera

In addition to our Llama friend, there were lots and lots of miniature ponies.

Feria de Matadores pony image

Of all of the ponies, this one definitely had the coolest hairstyle. If you're into punk ponies that is. (I am)

Aside from the animals wandering around, one of the highlights of this market is said to be the Gaucho shows on horseback.  Apparently the Gauchos perform various cowboy skills and other feats of strength/prowess while on horseback.  We did see the gauchos and the horses, but I think they must just have been warming up because not much was happening.  That said, plenty of people were waiting around expectantly, so I’m sure the shows do happen.

Feria de Mataderos gauchos

Or... it's possible that the gaucho feat of strength is just sitting still on a horse for a long time... if so, the show was awesome!

In Summary

We had a great time and while the Feria de Mataderos is unlikely to rock your world, it is sure to be an enjoyable Sunday afternoon and will allow you to get a much more authentic glimpse into Argentine culture and tradition as well as allowing you to see a different side of the city.  A perfect 3-4 hour outing off the beaten path.

Quick tip:  Be sure that you have a way to get home arranged before you go–we found it to be quite difficult to flag down a taxi as this is quite far away from the city center and cabs are a bit rare (also, apparently the neighborhood is a bit iffy safety-wise if you stray too far away from the market).  Either know the right bus to get you home or bring a phone and call for a cab to pick you up (which we keep hearing we should be doing all the time anyway, but we continue to tempt fate with flagging down cabs on the street).

Enjoy!

The 5 major food groups of Argentina

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In the US, we have a food pyramid with recommendations on what we should eat; it looks something like this:

5 food groups image

5 basic food groups (US version)

In Argentina, they have a similar system, though it looks a little bit different.  From what we can tell, this is a relatively accurate depiction:

Argentine food pyramid image

Our best stab at the Argentine food pyramid

People rave about the food in Argentina, especially the beef, and we agree. We absolutely loved the food when we first got here, but after 3 months, it’s gotten a little repetitive.  Pretty much every day when we’re trying to decide what to eat, it comes down to a few options, which we have categorized into the 5 major food groups of Argentina:

  1. Carne. This one’s obvious (not to mention one of the reasons we came here). The steaks are spectacular, and we go out for a steak dinner at least once a week. More to come on some of our favorite spots to practice carnivourism, but we’ve already told you about our neighborhood gem El Estrebe.
  2. Pizza. As close to 60% of Argentina’s population is of Italian descent, pizza is big here. You can find a pizza place on nearly any block in the city. Our favorite pizza right now is either pepperoni or ham, covered with lots of cheese, fresh tomato slices and roasted red peppers. It looks something like this . . .
    Argentine pizza image

    Puts Domino's to shame

    And tastes amazing. One odd thing that we’ve noticed here is that they almost always finish your pizza off with a couple of olives (usually green, but we got some black ones last time). It’s not necessarily listed as an ingredient in the pizza, but there it is nonetheless. Go figure.

  3. Pasta. Again, due to the Italian heritage, pasta is big here, especially fresh, stuffed pastas (e.g., ravioli, cannoli) – seems that they look down on dried pastas a bit, and actually list them separately on the menu. Our experience has been a bit hit-or-miss but generally good overall. If anything, the pastas can be a bit softer (think squishy, overcooked) that we’re used to back home. And there’s something going on with the olive oil here. Not sure exactly what, but it tastes (and smells) slightly chemical-y. We always just cross our fingers that the pasta we ordered is light on the oil.

    Argentine sorrentinos image

    Fresh homemade sorrentinos stuffed with ham and cheese and covered in fresh bolognese

  4. Empanadas. Best invention ever. Although the term isn’t the most appetizing, I think “meat pie” is actually the most accurate description. It’s a stuffed bread in a half-circle shape stuffed with a filling – beef or chicken are most common, but there are lots of varieties. As mentioned in other posts, this has become a staple meal for us, eaten at least once or twice a week. And they’re cheap – 40 pesos (~$10) buys a dozen that lasts for two meals. Not bad.

    Buenos Aires empanadas image

    Different shapes for different flavors

  5. Dulces. Dessert is its own food group in Argentina. We read somewhere early on in our time here that Argentines lead the world in their consumption of meat (obviously) and sweets. Sweets are available everywhere, and at all times of day – sweetened mini-crossaints for breakfast, dessert is included in most set lunches, more bakeries per capita than we’ve ever seen.  They even have a special meal that’s basically just an opportunity to eat more dessert: merienda is the meal in Argentine eaten between lunch and dinner, most like an afternoon snack in the US. Understandable, since dinner is so late (10pm is common). The most popular things to eat for merienda are a coffee and a torta (cake) or other dulce. We’ll be writing more soon on our favorite dulces, but for now the most important thing to mention is dulce de leche. Made basically just from milk and sugar, it’s a thick caramel that’s eaten in every way you can imagine – stuffed between two cookies and covered in chocolate (alfahores), on top of flan or ice cream (helado), or on its own by the spoonful.

    Flan with dulce de leche image

    Homemade flan served with a side of dulce de leche - perfect finish to a light afternoon lunch!

Basically, just about anything you could eat in Argentina will fall into one of the above categories. And the interesting thing is that almost every restaurant you visit will offer all 5 food groups! Even though you’re at what seems to be a pizza place, they probably still have steak on the menu. And the empanada place may offer pasta. But, that doesn’t mean you should order it.  The key is learning what to order in each type of restaurant, which we’ve learned through several strategic ordering errors. Just because it’s on the menu doesn’t mean that they do it well, and it’s critical to learn quickly what to order (and what not to order).

Another thing we learned right away: Argentines don’t like spice (to the extent that you have to specifically ask for black pepper in most restaurants), which can lead to a lot of pretty bland food.  But all in all, we think we’re pretty lucky with the food options here.  We’ll continue our diligence and provide additional detail on each of the 5 food groups defined above, as well as our favorite restaurant picks in each category. But now, we’re off to dinner!