Travel Like Bourdain
Argentina
The steak will ruin every other steak. The city will ruin every other city.
The Forgotten Atlas — Field Report
The steak will ruin every other steak. The city will ruin every other city.
Buenos Aires rewards the person who stays long enough to understand it. On the surface it is a European city transplanted to South America — broad Haussmann boulevards, ornate apartment buildings, café culture at every corner. Scratch that surface and you find something stranger and more interesting. A city that has been through economic collapse, military dictatorship, and a currency crisis that wiped out the savings of an entire generation — and came out of it somehow more alive, more argumentative, more passionate about food and football and politics than before.
Buenos Aires is the kind of city that gets under your skin. The food, the people, the energy. It stays with you.
Anthony Bourdain
Everything here revolves around the asado. It is not just a method of cooking meat — it is a social institution, a ritual, a reason to gather. The best asado you will eat is not in a restaurant. It is in someone's backyard on a Sunday afternoon, with red wine that costs three dollars a bottle and tastes better than wine three times the price, and an argument about football that goes on for four hours. If someone invites you to their asado, cancel whatever else you had planned.
San Telmo is the oldest neighbourhood in the city — cobblestone streets, tango dancers in the Plaza Dorrego on Sundays, antique markets, and parillas that have been in the same family for three generations. Palermo is where the city goes to eat in the modern sense — inventive restaurants, natural wine bars, the kind of cooking that takes Argentine ingredients and does unexpected things with them.
Come for a week. Stay for a month. Buenos Aires has a way of extending your visa in ways that have nothing to do with immigration.
The oldest neighbourhood. Cobblestone streets, Sunday markets, tango in the plaza, and the most atmospheric parillas in the city.
The neighbourhood that ate the rest. Restaurants, bars, boutiques. Come here to eat the modern version of Argentina.
The famous colourful buildings of Caminito. Tourist-heavy but worth thirty minutes. Then go eat somewhere nearby and forget about it.
The cemetery here contains Eva Perón's tomb and is genuinely one of the most extraordinary urban cemeteries in the world. Surrounded by excellent cafés.
Considered by many to be the best parilla in Buenos Aires. Book weeks ahead or arrive when it opens and wait. The provoleta alone is worth the trip.
A classic almacén that has been here since 1952. Order everything. Drink the house wine. This is what Buenos Aires used to taste like everywhere.
A chorizo sandwich stand in San Telmo that became a phenomenon. A perfect choripán costs almost nothing and is one of the great street food experiences in South America.
Indian-inflected food using Argentine ingredients. Sounds like it should not work. Works completely. One of the most interesting restaurants in the city.
A bar hidden beneath a flower shop. The cocktails are extraordinary. The room is beautiful. Go late.
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