Farewell Buenos Aires

[PhilipDT]

I guess the pizza would be better in Argentina if you like under-cooked cardboard crust, 4 lbs of melted cheese, and olives thrown on top for color variety.

Me? I like thin crust and a real choice of toppings (pepperoni, sausage, chicken, BBQ chicken, spinach, onions, peppers, mushrooms, and even pineapple) ... and tomato SAUCE, dammit! Where's the freaking tomato SAUCE? Pizza is supposed to have tomato SAUCE! A spray coloring of reddish stuff on the dough doesn't equal tomato SAUCE!

Did I mention that I like tomato sauce on my pizza?

I want to click like on this post; I really do. Unfortunately you had to go and put pineapple in there.....

 

[pompeygazza]

Don't you hate it when a silly expat lives in a country for 1 or 2 years and suddenly thinks he holds the truth to what that country should do to be a better place?

Personally no. I think if an intelligent person lives for a year or two in another country he or she will probably have a better idea of how to solve its problems that the locals.

Give expats credit where it's due. We move to new countries, integrate with the culture, learn the language and deal with the paperwork. Surely that creates views that are worth listening to?

 

[solerboy]

Personally no. I think if an intelligent person lives for a year or two in another country he or she will probably have a better idea of how to solve its problems that the locals.

Give expats credit where it's due. We move to new countries, integrate with the culture, learn the language and deal with the paperwork. Surely that creates views that are worth listening to?

It seems strange to see local politicians trying to solve problems which other countries have already solved. And doing it wrong.

 

[sergio]

While we are on the topic of food, let's talk about those hard-as-rock, tasteless, without a drop of butter "media lunas". There are Argentines who think they are delicious. Some who have been to France think the Argentina version is far better. I guess when you grow up with low standards you get accustomed to a substandard norm.

 

[JamJam]

I find it so funny how the locals think the food is fantastic here!

Basically the beef and ice cream are good and thats about it. The rest is pretty bad.
Plus not many Porteños I know, know how to cook.

I blame Time Out for over hyping this place.

 

[cbphoto]

I have an Argentine friend of nearly 20 years (since he moved to the States).. and to this day.. for the most part eats steak with fries or hamburger with fries.. every lunch and dinner. That's after 10 years in San Francisco (some of the best variety and quality restaurants in the world) and 10 years in Los Angeles. I only lived in BsAs for a year..but I can say..overall the food was bland with almost no variety. Really don't even need to read the menu.. they are all the same.
I think somewhere earlier in this thread someone had written that the Italian food is better in BsAs then in Italy.. LOL.
Portenos don't seem to like any spice...any! So I do find the Indian cuisine experience there.. not.
I think the sushi experience sums it up. 1/2 of the choices with cream cheese.. choice of fish.. Salmon, shrimp.. if you lucky they might have Maguru (tuna)..haha

 

[ElQueso]

Yeah, I read the comment earlier about Italian food being better here than in Italy. I had to laugh. I know we all have our own various tastes, but geez! I have spent some time in Rome in the west and Ravenna and Venice in the east. I can remember so many different meals there, and can't remember a single bland, tasteless meal. The worst meal I had there (of about four months total in Italy) was the one time I had a McDonald's while in Venice. And I also have never seen many of the meals here that I was served there that were quite memorable.

To compare one meal in Rome that I particularly liked, to one here - a 4-cheese pasta dish. In Rome the cheese was a sauce well-blended with wonderfully tasty cheeses, and bits of bacon mixed in that gave it a great flavor, in addition to various other spices. Here, a similar dish - heavy, gooey cheese and if you look closely (but you don't have to look TOO closely) you can actually see the 4 separate cheeses, no bacon (or panceta) and little flavor. 4-cheese dishes can be heavy, but the ones I had in Rome were not too much so. Here - I leave feeling like I have a bowling ball in my stomach. It's been awhile since I braved a pasta dish like that.

Some of the pizza I had in Rome was lacking in tomato sauce, but often that was by design. Light, thin, crispy crusts are what I remember. The pizzas I can remember having without tomato sauce were something like little shrimp with arugula and a few other veggies, extremely tasty and the tomato sauce would ruin the flavor. Others, more "normal" pizzas, all had a fresh tomato sauce that was made up of fresh recently pureed tomatoes mixed with fresh spices, not pure de tomate poured out of a box purchased at the grocery store and added grudgingly to the pizza, which sits on top of something that is difficult to name "pizza curst" and is more like a baked bread.

And the meat and fish dishes - my god. I could go on and on. Particularly the fish in Ravenna!

The best Italian here (without going to places that probably cost something on the order of 200 pesos a plate or more - places I don't frequent) is more along the lines of Olive Garden in the States or so. Not terrible, but not particularly inspired either. The big problem is that the best here is not the norm by far.

Having said all that, my palette doesn't suffer too much. I like to cook, and my eldest sister-in-law is a professional chef, and even with the lack of ingredients with which we often find ourselves, we still manage to turn out meals that far outperform any restaurant I've been to here.

 

[Tomjj]

A lot of people I know have cut their stay short here.

The city seems to be lacking in so many ways.

Its just doesn't stack up to what you hear about it before you arrive.
I can't wait until my contract is up so I can leave.

 

[mariposa]

[background=rgb(252, 252, 252)] if you look closely (but you don't have to look TOO closely) you can actually see the 4 separate cheeses[/background]

Are there really 4 different cheeses in Argentina?? They all taste the same to me....

[background=rgb(252, 252, 252)]Some of the pizza I had in Rome was lacking in tomato sauce, but often that was by design.[/background]

That's because Rome is not a tomato sauce kind of place. Good Roman pizza does not have tomato sauce. (Which is one of the reasons the pizza there is so good.)

 

[toongeorges]

Buenos Aires (Argentina) is Italy.

I lived in Rome too. I agree the mentality is very similar, though it is not completely the same. The mentality in Buenos Aires is more extreme. For example, machismo is very common in BA and it is also on the mind of Italians, though Italians cannot out themselves as freely, since Italian women are quicker to lose interest. Italian women are the most materialistic in Europe, women are not as materialistic in BA. Also organised crime is better developed in Italy, but on the other hand Italy is also more actively pursuing corruption and has a somewhat functioning democracy. The chaos in BA seems to be in a more nascent state and things are getting worse, whereas Italy more or less moves along.