14 Food Reasons Argentines Are Better At Life

[kerriem]

Am I the only one that thinks the pasta is quite good?

I miss medialunas and dulce de leche now that I'm no longer in BA!

 

[ElQueso]

"Over all" is indeed a generalization. He certainly didn't seem to be saying there was no good food here. Since I agree with him, I would have to dispute that it is an "over-generalization". If you search hard you can find decent diverse meals, it's true.

There are, for example, a number of "Mexican" food restaurants here, but the majority that I've been to are all pretty much the same - crappy. Same goes with many other "ethnic" food restaurants, again in my opinion.

Pizza, pasta, parilla. Most restaurants follow this menu - you don't even have to look at the menu to order.

Living here for nearly 8 years, I often hope I can find a really good place to eat something different. I go to a lot of different places.

We went to a seafood place the other day that one of my friends raved about and I ordered a paella. It wasn't even good as just rice and seafood with huge chucks of chicken thrown in - it was completely tasteless.

I've been to "Mexican" restaurants where a burrito, an enchilada and a taco were all the same except for where they put the sauce (on top for the enchilada, inside for the burrito, and no sauce for the taco). They consisted of nothing more than a small tortilla folded over some not-very-tasty meat.

I've been to Italian restaurants and tried a four-cheese pasta where it seems they literally just melted the cheeses together without making a sauce, and the cheeses were in the process of separating as I tried to eat my meal.

I've been to expensive steak places in Puerto Madero and other places where the meat I got was tough, full of gristle and dry as a bone.

To me, "over all" is not at all an over-generalization (nor hyperbole), but rather a statement of fact for people who have discerning palettes. It's not impossible to find good places, but the majority of places that serve bad to so-so meals is much greater, to me, than those who serve good to excellent meals.

 

[ajoknoblauch]

Am I the only one that thinks the pasta is quite good?

I miss medialunas and dulce de leche now that I'm no longer in BA!

I will never miss dulce de leche, but I do enjoy medialunas, especially when they're fresh out of the oven. I'm also fine, mostly, with Argentine pastas.

 

[nlaruccia]

Pizza, pasta, parilla. Most restaurants follow this menu - you don't even have to look at the menu to order.

That's why whenever you sit down at any restaurant in Buenos Aires the waiter comes to take your order directly, and doesn't even give you a menu. Because all the restaurants serve the same food. They actually seem to get annoyed if you ask to see the menu.

 

[Redpossum]

That's why whenever you sit down at any restaurant in Buenos Aires the waiter comes to take your order directly, and doesn't even give you a menu. Because all the restaurants serve the same food. They actually seem to get annoyed if you ask to see the menu.

DOH! So that's what's going on! I wondered why I was getting those semi-disgusted reactions when I asked for a menu.

 

[ajoknoblauch]

DOH! So that's what's going on! I wondered why I was getting those semi-disgusted reactions when I asked for a menu.

Not the case in any restaurant I go to, though some have chalkboards.

 

[internationalguy]

An over-generalization at best. In Buenos Aires you can find a diversity of excellent food, but that's more difficult in the provinces, where it can be monotonous after a time.

A time meaning like 6 days?

 

[ElQueso]

A time meaning like 6 days?

Took me a year...but that was back when the meat was much better on whole.

 

[internationalguy]

My biggest frustration is the lack of consistency. You can order the exact same thing from the exact same place the very next day and end up with a completely different version of the same thing (both in quality and preparation).

 

[citygirl]

I do agree - I have never really found good pasta here. As for the rest, I find that cooking at home (where yes, medialunas, milanesas and asado are featured frequently) is the best solution as we can make it the way we like it.
And if you come to an asado at our house, I can guarantee the meat will be as rare as you like and the empanadas as spicy as you might want.