Best Beef in the World – Argentina

If you have a beef with steak, I suggest you let it rest…on an Argentine grill. Because that’s exactly what I did and it worked just find for me…until I realized I would be spending the following month on a beach in St. Thomas. Shut up, I do NOT have a food baby...

Swimsuit shame aside, my rather anti-climactic introduction to Argentine steak started in Ushuaia. Maria Lola’s Lomo with raspberry red wine glaze turned out to be pretty lame-o. Lomo may be one of the most prized cuts, but lean is mean especially when it’s bland and slightly overdone, and the fruity sauce tasted a little too much like it put the J in PB&J.

The lomo was laughable, but a beef buff doesn’t throw in the napkin after one mediocre meat. Then a brief longing for Patagonian lamb led to a long ache for steak, which Rio Alba only enriched. A classic steakhouse, complete with elderly waiter who was clearly the strong, silent type, I rallied to an unsurprisingly amazing and fabulously flavorful Bife de Chorizo. Unfortunately, this one was cooked a little too close to medium but by no fault of theirs. I tried saying rojo, but word from the wise…aka the idiot who didn’t look up how to say rare in Spanish before going to a nice steakhouse…look up how to say rare in Spanish before you go to a nice steakhouse.

Rio Alba had a strong showing, but after two weeks of seeing almost no English-speaking tourists, I started to wonder where the gringos go. The answer is clearly La Cabrera where you get the Argentine steak with all the comfort of Ruth’s Chris. The wait staff speaks fluent English, and everything is as polished-as-can-be, down to the free flutes of champagne while you wait. There’s no better way to make an Asian glow…with happiness you racist. And what better occasion for this celebratory beverage than the wait for a flawless Ojo de Bife (ribeye)?

The best part is, La Cabrera’s steak comes with all the fixin’s. Far as I could see, that wasn’t typical when you order grilled meat in Argentina. Not only does your whopping 400 grams (0.88 pounds) of ribeye come with a complimentary salad, complete no less than 10 little crock-lets of optional add-ons, the sides are pretty swell. The sweet potato is sweet, the mashed potatoes creamy, and who can object to precious pearl onions in red wine?

They say when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. I say when life gives you a beef, make steak. If I ever had a beef, I’d want La Cabrera to make my steak. And if I have no beef with you, I won’t have a cow if you want to sit down and share.

Battle of the Bitters: Mate vs Fernet – Argentina

Recipe for Mate:

½ gourd/cup yerba mate

2 tbsp sugar

To prepare: Fill hollow gourd halfway with Mate, add sugar on top. Add hot (NOT boiling) water. Consume with bombilla.

Mate may sound simple, but these little leaves will pack some punch. A bitter brew at best, spoonfuls of sugar will help this medicine go down. And once you do get it down, it’s hard not to see appeal of the earthy herbal notes on which to start or end your day.

Recipe for Fernet y Cola:

2 cups of mixed medicinal herbs

½ cup camphor

1 cup Listerine mouthwash

1 small Halls mentholated cough drop, crushed

3 drops Vicks vaporub, undiluted

1 cup black cough syrup-like sludge, thinned

Combine herbs, Vicks and Halls in small, durable bowl. Mix, mash, mortar, and don’t forget to pestle. Gradually stir in thinned black sludge until mixture is liquid and smooth.

Add Coke or Pepsi, stir until desired flavor is achieved. Recipe may require more than 2 liters.

Serving size: anyone foolish enough to try it.

Imagine every herb your tiger-mom fed you to cure your cold, clear your cough, reduce your fever, and make you grow tallerstrongersmarter, all in one convenient cup. Sorry, skeptic, but your mom was onto something. Because the taste of hospital mixed with essence of medicine is forever immortalized by the Argentine palate, and Fernet has found a home in every restaurant, bar, and alcohol-selling establishment in Argentina. And let’s face it, every establishment in Argentina sells alcohol. Fernet y Cola is their Cuba Libre, and who cares if the rum’s gone when you can savor this sludge’n’Coke?

Lesson learned: When ordering Fernet, always add a chaser. There was no soda in the world strong enough to suffice so I went with the Quilmes Bock. The combination of carbonation and alcohol made me brave enough to actually try the Fernet without plugging my nostrils in advance. And yes, yes I did need the entire liter.

But chaser or not, this is one doctor who won’t be buying from the pharmacy of Fernet. The whole country’s mad for mate and honestly, so am I.

Patagonian Lamb - Argentina

Today’s brief is brought to you by the letter C. Yesterday, C was for Centolla, Chiko’s, and the catastrophic nature of my experience with both. Is it pure coincidence that the chords of my calamity are so clearly characterized by a single letter? I think not.

But featured letters are usually used to depict the more positive things in life. That or I missed the episode of Sesame Street where C was for cringe. And for every encounter, there is often a counter, and today, C is for Cordero, which is by far the best thing I had in Patagonia and possibly all of Argentina.

For starters, I sought the comfort of Ushuaia’s Bodegon Fueguino, the only Ushuaian restaurant I encountered with a line out the door. And no wonder. This sweet, cozy, winery-esque abode is all charm with a capital C, and the fire-pit-on-a-spit Cordero with a sweet glaze of orange and honey was pure Patagonian nectar. I was afraid that sweetness would interfere with the gamey lamb, but nothing could cover up something this good.

I tried a different “cuts” of lamb in El Calafate, the first being this taste of Lamb Tripe. Yes, it is what it looks like. Don’t look too closely – I won’t be culpable for upsetting a stomach much weaker than mine.

I found the idea of Lamb Pie highly suspicious, and after canoodling with the culinary tourist traps all over Costa Rica, I was even more reluctant to dine at a restaurant bearing their cultural catch-phrase, no matter how highly recommended it came. Clearly I was wrong about Pura Vida, as evidenced by this crock of what I can only describe as Patagonian shepherd’s pie. I’ve had pie, but this Lamb Pie trumped all. The crust of sweet potato was a silky smooth mash, the filling was a gamey mix of crumbly ground cordero combined with small slices of not-yet mushy eggplant. Song, songof the far down south, here’s a sweet potato pie that’ll shut my mouth.

King Crab – Ushuaia, Argentina

From the way they talk about it in Ushuaia, you’d think the mighty centolla was a culinary deity, and not just a king. And why not? Who could say no to a leg of succulent crab? The answer to that rhetorical question is a traveler on a budget. For everything there is a price, and centolla is a reasonable splurge. I did splurge, but I could only afford to splurge once.

I’m already reluctant to try seafood in a tourist town, and if my Centolla Casserole from Chikos was any indication, I highly doubt that I missed out. For starters, I didn’t even get my food for a good half-hour. When I finally “told” a server (and by told, I mean a long barrage of arm-waving and pantomiming), a casserole arrived. The thing is, I ordered a stir-fry, But I wasn’t about to risk starving to death while pantomiming the replacement, and plus the casserole was on every other table so I assumed it was good. It was not good. It turned out to be a veritable pot de crème (and not the good kind) and neither looked nor tasted like the occasional chunks of crab leg floating in it. Sorry Ushuaia, but this is one king I will NOT be bowing to.

Ham & Cheese - Argentina

After so many tasty Argentine offerings, (yes, yes, I’ll get to the meat soon enough!), I really couldn’t believe the queso. Every bit of cheese I’ve had here has made me throw my hands up and ask, “¿Que?” in the same tone people use to ask wtf. Because there is just nothing O-que about the queso. The fresh mozzarella is as processed as it gets, anything called quatro quesos tastes like it was divided by quatro, and even the Roquefort is anything but forte. The best cheese I had was a wedge of grocery-store cheddar after a long hike.

Far as I’m concerned, all the jamon in Argentina should take a hike as well. The jamon cocido is a firmer version of spam. I had a little more hope for the jamon crudo. The strong Italian influence had them calling it prosciutto. And Argentina may have mastered pasta, but prosciutto is clearly a secret the Italians chose not to share. This thick, crude, heavily salted bears an eerie resemblance to something you dig out of a box of Lunchables when you’re too young to know any better.

My advice? Curse the queso, hurry past the ham and head straight to the lomo.

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.