But it is all about perception, as to what tastes are. I like Argentine beef, but not cooked like Argentines cook it, for example. Often over-cooked, with no taste but the beef itself. I'm from Texas and used to grill my steaks in a smoker with some kind of light seasoning on the surface - I love the smoke flavor from Mesquite or Hickory, for example, which as far as I have seen so far, there is no equivalent here. Even if there was, the parillas don't ahve the ability to keep the smoke concentrated so the meat soaks up as much (although I have seen some barrel smokers for sale near here - I may give up my parilla soon, but I can't find any good wood!)
There's nothing like a brisket cooked long and slow (6 hours, say) with apple wood - slightly sweet and not so strong that the meat is overwhelmed with the flavor for cooking 6 hours. But here, a vacio cut (about what we consider brisket) is cooked like other meat, and it is a substandard piece of meat that needs to be lovingly cooked to get the best out of it. Yet I see a lot of people eating vacio here.
New Yorkers seem to like their steaks a la plancha, which to me seems like sacriledge! I get this from a couple of New Yorker friends I have here who talk about how good a good New York strip is cooked slowly on a griddle. Yuck!
As far as cheese goes - well, I have encountered very few good flavorfull cheeses here. I'm not talking about more "exotic" cheeses like bleu cheese or roquefort, which I only like in salad dressings, but more "common" cheeses. Much of the mozzarela I've eaten here is what I would consider sub-quality flavor-wise, which is a reason why the pizza, to me, is not as good. It is made here, and of course, imported mozzarela is going to be too expensive.
I also like crunchy crusts. There is a place on Talcahuana, near Paraguay, named El Cuartito which I think has pretty good pizza, but it's still not what I would consider great pizza. Sometimes they even have real pepperonies and not just salami!
There is nothing, to me, like a simple piece of crunchy (more like toasted on the bottom), thin crust pizza with a healthy layer of cheese, a little bit of well-spiced tomato sauce, and pepperoni cooked on top, with the grease from the pepperoni spreading out on the top of the cheese. You just don't find that here, but Argentines simply may not like that flavor because it's not what they're used to.
As far as Pizza Hut goes - I don't know that they tried to make them exactly like in the US, and therefore they failed because of price on imported items. I don't really know what the reason was that they failed. However, I've had Pizza hut in Asuncion, and although I found it to be better than most pizzas I've had here in BA, they weren't nearly the same quality that you find in the States. I'm sure that Pizza Hut here would have been "Argentinized" like all foods are in all countries when they are introduced, and it just didn't play as well as the pizzarias that already existed, is my bet.
)
