Empanadas – Argentina

Picture all the worst things you can imagine and put them all together. You should get a mental image with some semblance to the men’s basketball team at UNC. Now picture the exact opposite of that and you have the Argentine empanada. Fluffy, flaky pastry shell stuffed with myriad meats, a variety of vegetables, or just the common cheese and chopped onion, these little edible emblems of all that comprises Argentine cuisine are a win every time. It’s just too bad I lost the photos…

Order a couple for a sit-down lunch or snack on a small one from any savvy street vendor. Even the smallest cafes and snack stands stock them by the bunch. The ground beef is always well-seasoned, and truly, the beef here is best. Then again, the moist shredded chicken was neither a fowl nor flavorless choice. And if you’re really lucky, you may stumble on a café that serves caprese because every time I’m craving anything veggie, they’re always fresh out.

Milanesa – Argentina

Move over chicken and eggplant, there’s a new parmesan in town. Egged and breaded to perfection and deep-fried golden-brown, that grass-fed flavor of Argentine beef flows all the way through that crispy bife de milanesa. And yes, it comes in chicken too. And no, I haven’t tried it. Who the heck orders chicken in the fire-land of beef?

The Milanesa Completa featured here comes from a simple little café called El Turco in Ushuaia where the perfectly fried cutlet is sided by fries and topped with a couple of eggs, sunny-side up. But even alone, milanesa stands strong with neither seasoning nor sauce, even without a gooey yellow yolk to spread over each crispy chew. In a country where steak and seafood are dinnertime delights, a bife de milanesa is a pretty solid way to middle your day just right.

Nothing Sweeter Than Dulce de Leche – Argentina

Sorry peanut butter, you may be the great American staple, but you don’t stand a chance in Argentina while dulce de leche lives. Forget the PB&J, here the grocery aisles house an impressive array of a butter that lets you spread the wealth.

Defined as a confection of sweetened milk and caramelized sugar, dulce displays the color and consistency of a thicker, sugary, milky caramel that doesn’t stick to your teeth. And in Argentina, everything’s a little sweeter with dulce.

A jar of spread will cover your bread, and there are even little packet portions for a girl on the go. It’s a little like salted caramel in ice cream, and Haagen Daas does no justice.

A crepe stuffing sweeter than sugar,

Filling alfajores to their fullest,

It even comes in Frappuccino form for those who like it latte. 

I’ve even taken to dipping my medialunas for breakfast. After two weeks of this sweet bliss, how the hell am I supposed to go home to fluff and Nutella?

A Plug for Pasta – Argentina

It’s hard not to get tired of meat here. Everything has meat. Even the meat has extra meat. So imagine my great relief when I found that a country that I didn’t even know had Italian influences can plate a pasta better than half of Boston’s North End.

They rocked the Pumpkin Ravioli in cream sauce, the potato gnocchi is homemade, and I suspect the ravioli is pretty fresh too. The fileto (tomato) sauce tends to be mediocre, but the creams are creamy as cream should be, and the quatro quesos is the same thing with cheese. So if you can overlook the cheesiness of this particular post, remember that I put in a plug for pasta, however brief.

Medialunas – Argentina

It may take a full moon to set off a baying wolf or howling hound, but it only takes half an Argentine moon for me. I barely notice the luna, it’s the medialuna that makes me throw my head back. 

Good thing they’re everywhere in Argentina. Every restaurant, every coffee shop, even Subway sells a couple with coffee as a breakfast combo. They’re ordered before, with, and after every meal during every hour of every day, and it’s not hard to see why. Denser than the French croissant, more buttery than the American turnover, and brushed with a light glaze sweeter than the Chinese pork bun, it’s hard not to buy one every time you walk by a bakery…or café…or bodega…or gas station… And for a couple USD at most, why not indulge in the cheapest eat in town?

Palabras From Argentina

Hola. Donde esta el bano. And thus concludes our lesson of new palabras en espanol. Mostly because that is the only intelligible espanol I speak. Also because if nothing else, this trip has taught me that I do not hablo espanol. My pronunciation is painful, and sometimes I say lo siento when someone doesn’t understand me just to apologize for butchering a language that was so lovely…until it came out of my mouth. The good news is, I’m a foodie so I do a lot of eating. Eating is one of few times during which it is normal and totally acceptable to refrain from speaking. So aside from ice trekking, mealtime has been my best time in Argentina.

Many people tell me that I need to work on my nonverbal cues or my body language. I disagree. I disagree because I have mastered the power of the point. Not the powerpoint, just the simplest tool of communication, the point. I point to whatever item my heart (and stomach) desires, and voila, my desire appears before my eyes. I can only hope that I know what I ordered because this method is not so conducive to questions. And so far, I’ve gone at least a week without saying a single word. When I do speak again, I wonder if I’ll be startled by the sound of my own voice.

I may struggle with the language, but Argentina is conflict free. The people have been some of the nicest, the restaurateurs and servers some of the most…patient. Plus Buenos Aires has a pretty cool Pink House, and what’s not to like about sipping beer in a rocking upstairs bar marked by nothing but a roughly-painted red door? La Puerta Roja, I’ll be back…but only if I can find you again.

Then there are the Patagonia cities. Where every step is an adventure and every sight takes my breath away. From the smaller Glacier Martial at the end of a grueling uphill trek to the Tierra del Fuego in Ushuaia, it’s not just the fire-land that makes every tourist’s fire burn. Just when you think you’ve seen it all, there’s the glacier Perito Moreno, a sight too unreal for any camera to believe.

I soaked in the sights, I drank in the beauty…sipped it, really, in the form of glacier ice in my Jameson…and I ate my way through it all. One bite at a time, one new palabra at a time, all the way from bustling BA to the southernmost city in the world.

An A for Effort at Assaggio – Boston

You can feed anything to a tourist. And the run-of-the-mill, dime-a-dozen, interchangeably unremarkable fare that characterizes most of North End hardly suggests otherwise. So when we planned Jenny’s bachelorette dinner at Assaggio, we weren’t expecting much. After all, the menu is agreeable, the prices are reasonable, and the slightly-off-Hanover location is to die for. With so much going for it already, Assaggio clearly didn’t need to try very hard.

But Assaggio did try. And they tried really hard. When I called to ask for a few bachelorette favors, my call was answered by the sweetest, most helpful people, including the manager herself. And after we got there, we were honored guests all the way, despite the full house.

The thing about planning is that every plan, no matter how well laid out, has its hazards. Sometimes you plan a surprise but the person bringing the surprise is late so you have to improvise. Sometimes you plan a cute Caprese but the person bringing the tomato has fed it steroids. Sure, it’s plump and juicy now, but those cute little circlets of mozzarella barely cover your gigantic red pinwheels. Good thing the plan B basil pulls it all together.

Planning is all about the details, sometimes it all comes down to how it looks. Whoever decided to present the sharp, bitter bits of Arugula, Endive, and Radicchio Salad as a beautifully chopped, festively arranged three-point trefoil clearly knew what they were doing. Even with non-descript vinaigrette, this one tasted almost as pretty as it looked.

I prefer vegetarian risotto with the simple savor of mushroom and the bittery sharp of parmesan, but if a seafood risotto were to convert me, the Risotto Al Pescatore would be it. Those plump grains of rice slid down smoothly in a dish that was simple and soupy. And all kinds of shellfish made for concoction that was all kinds of tasty.

At the end of the day, Assaggio is overall good and at worst just fine. The risotto was great, but the salads weren’t exactly standing out. But I won’t remember the food, I’ll remember how hard they worked for our food. I’ve tasted plenty of North End, but I’ve never sampled anything so sedulously sweet. Specifically, for example, when it was time for dessert, Assaggio could have easily made us buy theirs, but instead they encouraged us bring our own cake, which they cut and served at no extra cost.

At Assaggio, the food is good and the service is phenomenal. And when it comes to planning, I couldn’t have planned on a better place. Thanks in part to Assaggio’s grade-A efforts, Jenny’s night went without a hitch…the opposite of what will happen at her wedding.