Can you define "perfectly good?" Do you mean edible and you won't die from it? With the exception burgers meals, I've never experienced a "meal" under 1000 that wasn't terrible. Between 1500 and 2500 you can find really good options if you know the right restaurants. And obviously you find the best food when you go beyond that range. I find cheap food in Argentina to be very bad taste and quality. And what is so fucking hard about making a got damn chicken cesar salad here. I'm literally like 0-50 trying to find a good one. At this point I think I keep looking based on pure stubbornness to accept the reality.
Obviously everybody is different.
But I eat a fair amount of lunch specials- and they are often quite good.
I dont expect to find food from other cultures perfectly executed- Ceasar Salad is a Mexican invention for middle american tastes, and the addtion of chicken a 90s diet fad thing- meaning that its not exactly global. There are many foreign dishes you cannot, and will not, find in Argentina. Just like I have never had a really good empanada anywhere in the US...
I believe in eating local.
That means I eat choripans, and milanesas, I eat a variety of pizza and empanadas. I happen to love pasta, in all its many incarnations.
I eat at a fair amount of bar viejos- average bars in Buenos Aires with simple menus, serving simple honest food.
I eat at funky neighborhood places, which have one or two entrees for a lunch menu, and 800 to 1000 pesos is not uncommon.
I also eat at more interesting, more expensive, modern cuisine places like Gran Dabbang, or Apu Nena, Picaron or Condarco, and my wife and I usually both eat at a place like that for around 3000 pesos. But we are old, dont eat enormous amounts, and dont drink much. 3000 pesos goes a LONG way these days, even in pretty gourmet places.
