Dining in Buenos Aires, the Paris of South America

Normally I would not even mention food in my travel blog, but for our stay in Buenos Aires our restaurant meals deserve a chapter to themselves when talking about our travel experience in this city. Here we have eaten like never before on our trip and would like to share our reccommendation of some of the restaurants we visited:Aramburu, will by far be the most memorable meal and the most expensive meal we had. The restaurant is really small, with just room for twenty people who are sepparated from the small kitchen with just a glass wall. In order to get a table you have to call a few days in advance, and when you get there you will have to knock on an almost hidden door to get in. The menu is the same for all guests, just varied by seasons and consists of 12 courses with accompanying wines. Even though the food arrived quickly after each course was finished, it took us four and a half hours to get through all the meals. The visit to the restaurant was just as much an exiting experience as it was about the food itself, as most of the meals came with surprises such as aroma with liquid nitrogen, creating a smell to accompany the tasting of the meal, a meal served on rocks and a big selection of of topping to be tried with one of the desserts. With wines and tips we paid around 700 pesos (70dollars) for our meal, which anywhere else would have cost a fortune. It will be worth only eating pasta for a week to get this experience once when in Buenos Aires.

 

We found a place right next to Hotel Carsson in Viamonte Street where we ate lunch almost every day, as they had a huge selection of meals that you could pick from at a price of only 60 pesos per kilo! It was our best value restaurant in Buenos Aires, and it was not possible to get tired of it since they had every dish imaginable.

We also used the Buenos Aires Delivery app a lot to have sushi, and even ice cream sent to our hostel, Milhouse (which btw also served good food, but only until 6pm).

Argentina is also known for its quality meat from happy cows fed on green grass in the Pampas, and almost every other day of our two weeks in Buenos Aires we have gone to different restaurants to try to find the best beef in South America. We have narrowed it down to the three places we liked the most and can truly reccommend:

La Brigada: I dare calling the best beef I ever had, and ever will have. When the waiter served us our steak, he cut a little piece of with a spoon to ask us if we wanted a new one, less or more well done. A normal soup spoon! I honestly never thought it was possible to cut meat with a spoon, but when I put the piece of meat in my mouth it almost melted in my mouth and chewing it with my tongue would have been enough.

La Cabrera: was also a place where we got served real tender Argentinean beef. The best part of this place except from the delicious food, was that they had happy hour between the hours of 7 and 8 where the first ones showing up got 40%. There was a line outside and you pick your meal while waiting for them to open, then you pay upfront and get your meal served really fast so that you can leave before other guests arrive around 8, as Argentineans wont even consider calling it a dinner if the meal is served before 8 and on weekends they would sometimes have their dinner as late as around midnight! Great for us who could enjoy a luxurious beef meal with wine for around 300 pesos per person (at happy hour)

Siga La Vaca is a really good “tenedor libre” (all-you-can-eat) restaurant which was great for us to do in the beginning of our Buenos Aires stay, as we then could try a littlebit of all kinds of beef to find our favorites. The meat and prices were good which clearly was reflected in the long line of people waiting to come in around 9 o’clock when we left. A bottle of wine was also included in the buffet price at 180 pesos per person.

You will also get a good steak meal for around 100 pesos pretty much in every restaurant, and even at our tango lessons/ dinner show that we went to (link) only cost 390 pesos and included a quality steak with unlimited wine. There are still endless places where we have not visited, plenty of restaurants that you would have loved as well, and if you go to Buenos Aires you have to be careful so that you dont end up rolling back to your own country.