Just to orient you, Argentina is down at the southern tip of South America, and Buenos Aires is a port city on the country’s upper East coast. Consequently, those who live closest to the port, in the Capital Federal area of Buenos Aires, call themselves Porteños.
Although the city is enormous— Greater Buenos Aires holds 13 million residents— and there are countless topics to choose from, one of the first things I’m always curious about in a new place is the food. So I thought I’d give you a run-down of what Argentine food is like!
First off, just because Argentina is south of the U.S., the food here is in no way like Mexican food, and is probably the least spicy food you will ever find. (My host family’s son recently complained about how spicy a stew was, and although I’m usually a wimp when it comes to spicy food, I have to stay I was baffled that he thought it was spicy at all.) So it’s not surprising that many of the foreigners who come here would give an arm and a leg just to find a bottle of hot (actually hot) sauce. However, because of this, Argentinians are under the perception that Americans can tolerate the spiciest food imaginable and that our food has no flavor (because why else would we need to add hot sauce?) And also along the lines of spices, Argentinians commonly use salt but they don’t use pepper; my host family has a saltshaker but doesn’t even own a pepper shaker.
Moreover, Argentinians put onions and hard-boiled eggs in everything. They’re not always together, but every lunch and dinner is bound to have one or the other, in some form.
You can get just about anything in a “tarta” crust here. Picture a thin pot-pie crust filled with spinach, or potatoes, or just meat (but with onions and/or hard-boiled eggs added, of course).
Many Porteños are of Italian descent, so the food here is 100% carbs. Bread, pasta, pastries, crackers, and more bread. They start off with a very light breakfast— to have nothing more than a piece of toast isn’t unusual— and then they have bread with lunch, bread in the form of pastries for the “merienda,” an afternoon snack, and bread/pasta and crackers with dinner.
And DULCE DE LECHE. It’s everywhere. And don’t even think about saying it tastes just like caramel, because you will meet fierce opposition. They put it on toast, fruit, crepes, and inside even the most unsuspicious pastries. And every ice cream place has 10 different flavors that are variations on dulce de leche. Which brings me to my next point.
The ice cream. I’m worried for the day I return home because I don’t think I will ever find any ice cream in the States that lives up to the ice cream here. There are “heladerías” everywhere, some better than others, but they all serve what I can only describe as a hybrid of ice cream and gelato; extra creamy but not too soft. And Argentina has mastered the art of flavoring their ice cream with real fruit.
On a separate note from the ice cream, I cannot wait to have United States-style pizza. All of the pizza ingredients here are a little different; the cheese is more yogurt-like, the sauce is either different-flavored or missing, the crust isn’t doughy. And it seems there’s no traditional pepperoni pizza here. The closest is ham and cheese pizza, but the ham comes in deli slices, laid between the crust and the cheese.
Somehow I’ve gotten this far without talking about empanadas. They’re everywhere, in every bakery, and they are cheap and delicious. Probably the most common flavor is jamón y queso (ham and cheese), which is a very common combination here (besides dulce de leche).
All this is just a taste of the Argentine food culture. Argentinians eat breakfast first thing in the morning, usually around 8 or so, and they eat lunch around 1:30. At 5:00 in the afternoon, they have the “merienda” snack, and then they eat dinner around 9:00-11:00 at night. I like this meal set-up much better and will have hard time adjusting back!
~Rachel
