What do American expats miss the most about living in America?

[Girino]

Where on earth do you shop for cheese? Even Coto has a reasonable selection of non mass-produced cheese, and I get most of mine from Maja Jamoneria (https://majajamoneria.com/) which has a very good selection of foreign and local cheeses (and I always go for the local produce, it's cheaper and quite often better).

I don't think you know cheese. At all. Treat yourself to a trip to France or Italy.

 

[FrankPintor]

I don't think you know cheese. At all. Treat yourself to a trip to France or Italy.

Your attempt at snark falls flat given that I've lived in France and made more trips to Italy than I can count. It's actually possible to disagree without dissing someone, you know, maybe you should try it sometime...

 

[Redpossum]

Cheese is always a controversial subject, eh?

 

[BeraRane]

French and Italian people cringe at anglo-saxons that become wine and cheese snobs after a couple of vacations there.

 

[Redpossum]

OK, everyone, deep breath. Let's have a sense of humor, and not make this into a flame war.

 

[Millie]

I was just going to write something similar …

 

[Fiscal]

i agree osaka is fantastic. i'll give you that one.

i haven't tried any of the others so i'll take your word about quality, but just checking the menus of dashi and nicky ny for example i see the same problem. salmon, pulpo, langostinos, and maybe whitefish of some kind. mix and match all those with usual suspects to try to make it look like variety but it's all the same to me.

i want fresh tuna (and bluefin), fatty tuna, eel, yellowtail, mackerel, flounder, maybe even uni. maybe some of the other places you mentioned have those but that's the variety i'm talking about.

Eaten at Dashi at Buenos Aires and Rosario various times, always been pretty disappointed.

 

[Big Swifty]

You can't really beat up on Buenos Aires in particular for poor Mexican food: Mexican food sucks all around the world, with the lone exception of Mexico, and possibly California and Texas which have the great culinary fortune of having been Mexico until they were annexed in the slave wars.

The ingredients just aren't available elsewhere, where else are you going to find all the different chiles? Not to mention the different types of corn. And a basic bottle of Tequila costs 4600 pesos or so here or a bit over USD 20 at the blue rate, that's not bad by Euro / US price standards. Admittedly there isn't a lot of variety, but it doesn't really cost an arm and a leg either.

We're lucky we can get decent Peruvian food in Argentina, it's close enough for the essential ingredients to get here. It can be a lot poorer further away.

Your comment about the language is spot-on though

Whereabouts? My in-laws are Peruvian, and for those times any of us are in BsAs (which is where I assume you're talking about) knowing where to get the best Peruvian food would be valuable. We're outside of Cordoba, where Peruvian food is non-existent. In the city there's a place that's passable. Goods at the Peruvian/Bolivian market are around 4x what you'd pay in Peru (not unexpected), but instead of longing for things from home, I just find new things here. That goes for food from the US as well, I have things I get occasional cravings for that aren't available here, but I try to make the best with what's available and find new favorites. I miss real Mexican food as well. I'd even settle for the SW version of Mexican, which though it is it's own thing, can still be tasty. I miss other Americanized versions of ethnic food as well. Wondering if Thai even exists here.

Currently my big "miss" is the ability to locally source just about anything (when in the US) or have the ability to source it from Aliexpress (when in the rest of the world). As long as it may take, I was pretty confident I'd get what I ordered in at least a couple of months. Here, I'm not sure whether I can trust Argentine Customs to even let a purchase reach me. I'm okay with buying national products, but sometimes there's something I need for work or play that's just not available here at all. I'm a photographer. CaNikon is easy to find, but I shoot Fuji, which I'm guessing means either paying crazy customs duties or saving purchases for visits back to the states.

Also miss the ability to go the zone where the repair guys are (for whatever product) and be able to have them repair it right then and there. Not liking this whole 'come back next week' for even the simplest of repair/estimates. I have a love/hate thing with the work ethic. My inner-slacker and 'hora tropical' loving expat loves the concept, but it's damn inconvenient at times.

Overall I'll gladly take living here as opposed to back in the states. Too much stress inherent in the culture there. Too much racism ingrained in society. Too many spoiled people who feel they're entitled or somehow better than the rest of the world, just because they live in America. It seems now that nearly every possible topic is cause for division. There's no longer any kind of unifying experiences such as futbol, asado, etc. I'm at the point where it's a place to return to to get the things I can't get here or are crazily over-priced. When friends/family ask when the next time I'm coming to visit, I ask them when they'll be coming down to visit me instead.

 

[Big Swifty]

Trader Joe's
IKEA
Tijuana
Huevos Rancheros, fish tacos, refried beans, the universal availability of fresh tortillas, and Mexican food in general.
FRESH eggs, they're always old here.
A chain of distribution that actually works, (though it seems from the news that this died in the USA two years ago)
Charmin
The ready availability of hearty breakfasts
Balboa Park
Excellent weed and hash, delivered to my house, and it's all totally legal. Roberto's at 3am with the raging munchies.
Tequila that doesn't cost an arm and a leg.
People that speak Mexican Spanish, which I can understand, without all this bastardized-Italian platense sh sh sh sh bullshit.
Mexicans in general. They are good people.

As far as my family, ehhhh, I don't miss them all that much, and they sure don't miss me; after 8 years, I can barely get a reply to an email.

I'm super stoked to at least be again living in a country where it's not only legal, but easy to cultivate. Medicinal is legal in Peru as well, but they make it nearly impossible to cultivate your own. But here in my little pueblo alone there's at least two grow shops with organic supplies. I won't bother if all that's available is prensado from the street sprayed down with who knows what chemicals, or good quality, but crazily overpriced flowers. Argentina has some home grown companies that manufacture lights, nutes, seeds, and all that stuff. Already planning my DIY LED lights and grow space. Pursue your happiness, grow your own, ensure your own quality, make your own hash, kief, edibles, tinctures, etc. It's pretty easy and far from rocket science. As a song goes; "Save your seeds, save your seeds. Sun, soil and water is all you're gonna need.... It doesn't take a miracle to cultivate a weed."

 

[Redpossum]

I'm super stoked to at least be again living in a country where it's not only legal, but easy to cultivate. Medicinal is legal in Peru as well, but they make it nearly impossible to cultivate your own. But here in my little pueblo alone there's at least two grow shops with organic supplies. I won't bother if all that's available is prensado from the street sprayed down with who knows what chemicals, or good quality, but crazily overpriced flowers. Argentina has some home grown companies that manufacture lights, nutes, seeds, and all that stuff. Already planning my DIY LED lights and grow space. Pursue your happiness, grow your own, ensure your own quality, make your own hash, kief, edibles, tinctures, etc. It's pretty easy and far from rocket science. As a song goes; "Save your seeds, save your seeds. Sun, soil and water is all you're gonna need.... It doesn't take a miracle to cultivate a weed."

Be very careful with LED's. They generate dangerous amounts of UV, and the purple ones put out UV-C, which is normally completely filtered out of sunlight by the earth's atmosphere, so our eyes have no evolved protection against it.