Farewell Buenos Aires

[citygirl]

I think people are agog at the thought of anyone saying the food here is good, much less that Italian food is better here than in Italy . It's just.. it's just not. Been to Sao Paolo/San Pablo recently? Lima? Bogota even? (I can't comment on the pizza/Italian food specifically in those places though). Or NY, Paris, Toyko, Hong Kong, etc, etc,. But Buenos Aires- oh hell to the no on good cuisine here outside of steak and steak. And don't get me wrong - I love steak. But culinary wasteland is an apt description of the food scene here in general. Yes, there are good restaurants, some very good. But in a city this size, you would expect many, many more options.

 

[james p]

The sadest thing about the food in Buenos Aires is that it could be so much better with just a bit more care....although some ingredients used commonly in various regions are not available here,there is little being done to produce them....back in 2003 I used to have to search for ginger, today it is available everywhere, although molasses is still a bit of a challange! With all of the sugar produced here one has to wonder what they do with all of the slag (that is what molasses is after all). I have had some VERY good food here, but only one time in a restaurant (TOMO UNO) the rest has been in homes, cooked by friends.I have always wondered what tv cooking channels here are doing..They quite often use ingredients that are not available anywhere here! I remember about a year ago one of the chefs was cooking osobusco...the meat looked FABULOUS...nothing like the osobusco you find in BsAs..then they did a close up of the meat and you could see the blue stamp on it....It was half of the USDA stamp (United States Department of Agriculture) If you are going to try to encourage people to do better, at least give them attainable goals.

 

[germanb68]

Why you live in Buenos Aires if so awful?

 

[citygirl]

Where did I say Buenos Aires was awful? I said it was a culinary wasteland. One doesn't equal the other. I live here b/c my life is here , my OH is here and I'll probably live here for the rest of my life. I'm okay with that. I've been here for 5 years and have a pretty balanced viewpoint about BsAs. (Ie, I'm not a vacationer who thinks everything is AMAZING and I'm not a bitter expat on my way out who thinks everything is AWFUL). It has its good points and bad and I have no problem pointing out the shortcomings of Buenos Aires as well as the god things. And food = an area where BsAs falls very short compared to most other major cities around the world.

ETA - Would I prefer to live elsewhere? Probably, if only b/c life outside of Argentina is a lot easier, offers more professional opportunities and certainly financially we would be better off. But the OH is here, our business is here and I don't see us leaving anytime soon. Which is again, fine. I enjoy my life here and certainly am not unhappy staying here forever. Esp since I have the ability to travel when my breaking point is reached

 

[surfing]

IMO the main issues are:

1. Complete lack of diversity: there are five or six items that appear on almost every menu and that's about as far as it goes. And desserts seem to consist almost exclusively of some incarnation of dulce de leche

2. The Argentines seem to not care for spices so to my taste EVERYTHING is super-bland. YMMV

 

[Ceviche]

And most Asian food restaurant..Thai, Indian are selling awful food as well. We need variety of food here!

 

[Jose Negro]

Best pizza: la strada at recoleta mall

 

[mariano-BCN]

why do people here keep firmly stating Argentina has good quality of food? Anybody who have traveled in Asia (really any country there has a cuisine much better), Europe or Latin America (Mexican and Peruvian cuisine is sooooo much better, healthy and divers) knows better. Food options in Argentina are very poor, it's only about beef and pastas; even vegetarian restaurants sucks and are bloody expensive. The worst plates are salads: people in Argentina don't know how to make a salad! They chopped a few tomatoes, add something green and that's it.
I could understand this ignorance from Argentines who never travelled but expats...please get a life!

 

[steveinbsas]

I said farewell to Ciudad Buenos Aires exactly two and a half years ago today, but I didn't leave because of the pizza or the pasta...and I did not say farewell to Argentina.

Contrary to what one member once erroneously asserted, I did not move to the middle of nowhere.

I'm one kilometer from a suburban "village" (aka villa) of 1500 inhabitants, 8 KM from the center of Punta Alta (pop 75K) and within 25K of Bahia Blanca (pop 350K).

I don't miss the traffic, the noise, the rude people, the usual suspects in the streets and subte, or the lines in the banks and grocery stores. I don't miss the restaurants of BA because I hardly ever patronized them.

Country living in Argentina is wonderful. The locals have extended a warm welcome to the first norte americano to live in their community. Riding in the cab of the moving van 2.5 years ago tonight (during an 18 hour dive to get here) I had no idea I would enjoy living here as much as I do now.

It a good thing I have lots of work to do here (landscaping and maintenance) because the pan frances is so good and still so cheap (2 pesos) and I never turn down an invitation to an asado.

 

[mariano-BCN]

Steve, don't you miss the cultural life of any big city, the movies, people on the street, bookstores?