Buenos Aires

It’s 5:30 PM. You are in Buenos Aires in the dead of winter. You need food, but mostly you need warmth. You stop into the nearest cafe and order some coffee and medialunas (little croissants) to warm you up and hold you off until your dinner at 10:30 PM.

NOTE: Usually I drink my coffee black. I like it strong. However, most times in Buenos Aires I needed to douse (yes, douse) my coffee with sugar/milk. This was just my opinion (and the opinion of my traveling companions), but the coffee in Buenos Aires was not our fav. We would probably recommend ordering a cafe con leche most of the time.

Or, you could always just drink mate, a traditional South American drink made from the dried leaves of yerba mate in hot water. My travel buddies and I even went to the Mate Museum in a small (abandoned, at least in the winter) yet beautiful river town called Tigre. The museum was more like an older man’s home displaying his collection of mate paraphernalia, but we paid our dues and went with it.

On other nights, we would go out for dinner. We tried the northwestern Argentine food like empanadas, a pastry filled with meat, cheese, beans, and/or vegetables, locro, a hominy-based stew with meats, sausages, and vegetables, and humitas, sort of like a tamale but more mushy and a tad sweeter.

One of my favorite things about Buenos Aires was all of the live music. We frequented this one bar called Thelonious Bar. Live jazz almost every night. The bar had a warehouse feel to it with nice twinkle lights behind the band. I especially enjoyed how people both young and old came to hear the music and just hang out at the bar with a drink or a coffee.

El Enjambre

And one night we met some really well-dressed Argentines who are also in a band (called “The Shortcuts“) at a pizza place called Kentucky.

Our lunches were very hit or miss. Most times we would just duck into the nearest restaurant whenever we felt hungry. We would stare at the menu, slightly hesitant and unsure…

…and most times we would end up with a meal like this:

Lomo con champignons y papas noisette

Heavy, creamy, fried. Good for a few bites, but it was just a little too much for me. Oh yes, and I must not forget the condiment of the trip: salsa golf. What the heck is salsa golf? Well, wikipedia has led me to believe that it is basically just mayo with a tomato based sauce similar to ketchup and possibly some other spices like paprika or turmeric. We mostly just played around with our golf sauce, but Matt from the blog MattBites really seemed to like salsa golf: check it.

Salsa golf model! 

So yes, many of our lunches were hit or miss. But sometimes we would dip into some neat cafes/restaurants and even if the food was just so so, the decor was an A+.

Actually, I have to say that my favorite lunch breaks were when we bought street food from a choripán cart. Choripán is basically grilled chorizo on a crusty roll with chimichurri sauce (garlic-based) or mustard.

2 weeks in Buenos Aires was a lot of eating and I have only covered some of our many adventures in this post. I will say, though, that if you find yourself in Buenos Aires, you MUST go to Tierra Santa, the religious theme park that screams kitschy but is incredibly fun and full of animatronic shows of the birth of Jesus, the creation, the last supper, and Jesus’s resurrection. And you can pose behind cutouts of historical characters:


Traveling in Buenos Aires and Argentina in general during their winter can be pretty rough. Yes, you beat the crowds, but come prepared with warm clothes, especially in case you get stranded in the rain waiting for a taxi.

Ok, chau chicos! And don’t forget to eat dulce de leche until you can’t even look at it anymore!