Reasons to be Cheerful- Food in BsAs

[jp]

I'm allergic to wheat, which rules out pizza, pasta and empanadas. If you think the options here are limited, try living without 80% of whats available...

Still, I eat better now than when I arrived. Which puts me in the "one year on and still loving the food" group.

Stan, you're a curmudgeonly old bugger....

 

[Ries]

If ALL you can find is pizza, pasta, and beef, you are not looking very hard.

Me, I eat lots of fruits and vegetables, salads, and pork, chicken, and, yes, seafood.

Lots of good peruvian food- clusters of Peruvian places around Abasto.
Which feature stews, vegetables, and seafood.

A fair amount of quite good modern asian/argentinan fusion food out there too- Sudestata, in Palermo Hollywood, does decent pomo stir fries, at a good price. I like Sifones y Dragones, one of the Puertas Cerradas restaurants which are quite popular here-
see Dan Perleman's excellent blog for a rundown on these- he doesnt like Sifones, but I have had great meals there.
http://www.saltshaker.net/underground-dining-scene

I find plenty of non-carne dishes to love in BsAs. Omlettes and soups, mushrooms and asparagus, fruits in season, liquados and grilled veggies.

And I cook myself, especially Thai, Asian, and Mexican, which I find disapointing in BsAs,and one of the first things I bought was a blender, as I like my fruit liquados with no sugar, and lots of grated ginger.

I am a big fan of the family style restaurants, which you generally find outside of the Tourist Crescent, where the "salad bar" is huge, and contains tens of prepared salads, ingredients, and great veggies, all you can eat at a low price. I was in one a while ago just off Corrientes on Avenida de Estado de Israel, where the salad bar would satisfy anyone, with so many choices. Artichokes, beans, potatoes in many forms, fresh greens of many types- and just a few pesos, with free refills.

Again, you gotta EAT LOCAL.

Its all out there, if you are not restricted by your preconceptions.

 

[steveinbsas]

Stan, you're a curmudgeonly old bugger....

Who can't let go................but for reasons most of us can understand.

I think the negativity is just a mask for his now deeply repressed love of Argentina.

 

[Stanexpat]

If ALL you can find is pizza, pasta, and beef, you are not looking very hard.

Me, I eat lots of fruits and vegetables, salads, and pork, chicken, and, yes, seafood.

Lots of good peruvian food- clusters of Peruvian places around Abasto.
Which feature stews, vegetables, and seafood.

A fair amount of quite good modern asian/argentinan fusion food out there too- Sudestata, in Palermo Hollywood, does decent pomo stir fries, at a good price. I like Sifones y Dragones, one of the Puertas Cerradas restaurants which are quite popular here-
see Dan Perleman's excellent blog for a rundown on these- he doesnt like Sifones, but I have had great meals there.
http://www.saltshaker.net/underground-dining-scene

I find plenty of non-carne dishes to love in BsAs. Omlettes and soups, mushrooms and asparagus, fruits in season, liquados and grilled veggies.

And I cook myself, especially Thai, Asian, and Mexican, which I find disapointing in BsAs,and one of the first things I bought was a blender, as I like my fruit liquados with no sugar, and lots of grated ginger.

I am a big fan of the family style restaurants, which you generally find outside of the Tourist Crescent, where the "salad bar" is huge, and contains tens of prepared salads, ingredients, and great veggies, all you can eat at a low price. I was in one a while ago just off Corrientes on Avenida de Estado de Israel, where the salad bar would satisfy anyone, with so many choices. Artichokes, beans, potatoes in many forms, fresh greens of many types- and just a few pesos, with free refills.

Again, you gotta EAT LOCAL.

Its all out there, if you are not restricted by your preconceptions.

I'm not saying you can't find some variety but you have to dig very hard to find it there. I'm not talking about what people cook at home but what you find in restaurants there. 95% of them have more or less the same menu. For a city of it's size there is very little variety. You can find it especially in the high-end more pricey establishments. What the average Argentine eats and what you find on offer there in most establishments I find dull and generally unappetizing. There is not a spirit of trying different or new things in the culture there.

 

[Ries]

I can think of quite a few places where I have been where the selection is much more limited-
For instance, the entire state of Utah- Mormons seem to compensate for giving up alcohol and caffeine by putting sugar in everthing! Every vegetable has sugar on it, ever salad dressing is sickeningly sweet, even the meat usually has sugar on it, or in the sauces that are slathered on it. Combine that with the total dominance of multinational chain food, and you have several hundred miles of driving where I need to subsist on beef jerky and Mickey's Big Mouths.
Frankly, in most cities, and especially small towns in the USA, most of the food is dull and unappetizing, and you have to dig pretty hard to find good stuff.

Or places like the town of Bengkulu, on the southern coast of Sumatra (sorry, the old memory aint what it used to be, I had to look that one up) - where in the market, the ONLY recognizable foodstuffs, besides cigarettes and beer, are bananas and canned mackeral. Every fruit, every vegetable, every 4 foot tall of strange smelling brownish shavings of something is like nothing you have ever seen before. The couple of restaurants in town serve noodles, with fish shavings, fried in rancid palm oil.

I will take Buenos Aires any day, thank you very much.

 

[Conorworld]

When I was living in BA I loved the food. Although there was not many specialty stores like a British/American/German food store or a wholly organic one etc the range and choice overall was good. Restaurants were very good. I preferred the dining scene to a lot of cities I have been to and was much more enjoyable than, say Sao Paulo.

Out of curisoity for when I return. Are there any specialist stores with silly foods in BA like a British food store or something?

 

[Ries]

What IS "british food"?

Marmite? or is it Vegemite, I always get confused which is Brit and which is Aussie.

But seriously, what prepackaged, as opposed to cooked, foods, are considered uniquely british that would require a british food store?

Here in the USA, we have Twee Olde English stores, but generally they sell marmalade and tea. Maybe some biscuits and the occasional oatmeal stout.

Last time I was in London, I got the distinct impression that any restuarant trying to actually make money made a point of NOT being British- Indian, Italian, French, Middle Eastern- anything else.

 

[jp]

There's lots of condiments and spreads that are english.
Then there's tea. Tea here is rubbish and overpriced, but happily a steady stream of visitors and judicious bulk purchases keep us safe.

If they could only get guinness right....

 

[Lucas]

What IS "british food"?

Marmite? or is it Vegemite, I always get confused which is Brit and which is Aussie.

Definitely...FISH & CHIPS.

 

[Conorworld]

Sorry. I was distracted when I was making my original post. Yes I meant tea and biscuits, that sort of thing.