Our Problems With Restaurants in Buenos Aires, Argentina
One time, I was talking to a writer about the difficulty of personal essays; you want to be honest, but people will be offended if you portray them the way you’ve experienced them.
He told me, “As a writer, your job is to tell your truth. If people care about being portrayed well in writing, then they should behave well to writers.”
It’s hard to take to heart, but I agree with his sentiment. And that’s a bit how I feel about restaurants in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
You see, I didn’t go into the city with any desire to think poorly of its food and restaurants. In fact, I was incredibly excited for the food there. I had heard so much about how good the restaurants in Buenos Aires are, and had been looking forward to Argentininan-style pizza for weeks.
Unfortunately, the restaurants in Buenos Aires, Argentina didn’t even come close to meeting our expectations, much less our hopes. In case you’re a food-oriented traveler (like us!) and want our perspective as you decide where to go, here’s why we were disappointed!
And yes, I’m aware this post is going to get some hate. All I can say is that if you love the food in Buenos Aires, Argentina enough to get mad about this post, I think you’ll be absolutely mind blown when you eat in other parts of the world.
1. Lack of Seasoning
Remember 15 years or so ago in the United States, when sodium was the worst thing ever and everything was bland for a while?
That’s what we felt like at just about every restaurant in Buenos Aires. The meat, which Gustavo had been so excited for, came out bland and unseasoned (not to mention often tough and overcooked). All my dishes, too, were bland and tasted like the chefs had never heard of salt.
Steaks might be a staple of Argentinian cuisine, but most restaurants in Buenos Aires erred on the bland side of seasoning.
We’ve eaten everywhere from street food stalls to Michelin-starred restaurants all over the world, and haven’t had issues with seasoning, so I don’t think it’s just that our taste buds require any particularly high levels of salt.
This wasn’t a one-time thing. It was at every restaurant we went to for the first four weeks in Buenos Aires (and, as food travelers, we eat out a lot).
There’s definitely a way to use less salt by compensating with other flavors and spices. That wasn’t the case here. If the dishes had come with sauces that were garlicky, spicy, citrusy, or otherwise vibrant, we could have coped. But no, they were just bland.
2. Everything Was Mild
This is related to #1 and the overall blandness of food. Even when food was marked on menus as “Spicy!!”, it came out bland. (And I say that as a white girl from California!)
We know that Argentina isn’t known for spicy food the way some other countries are, but we were craving flavor so much that we went to a couple of Indian restaurants just to get a fix.
There, we ordered “spicy” dishes. They were bland. We tried again, requesting “extra extra spicy.” Still bland. Normally I would think it was just a problem with those specific restaurants, but considering everything else, it was just part of a trend.
Even the patatas bravas dish that we ordered at a tapas restaurant, which enticingly warned that it came with a spicy sauce, was bland.
3. Excessive Cheese
Sometimes I felt as if the restaurants were trying to make up for the lack of flavor by drenching everything in cheese. Steak, fish, vegetables… frequently anything we ordered was just indiscriminately cheesy.
At one point, thoroughly done with everything being heavy and bland, I asked a waiter what he would recommend for a light, fresh vegetarian dish. He suggested a full-sized version of the grilled seasonal vegetable side. I said that sounded perfect.
What’s under all that cheese?
Imagine my surprise when what arrived at the table wasn’t, as I had expected, a beautiful, colorful plate of grilled veggies.
Instead, it was a gooey white mound of melted cheese. Somewhere buried under there, as I discovered after pulling aside the heavy and cloying curtain of cheese, were some chunks of broccoli and potato.
4. The Worst Pizza Ever
Okay, let me qualify that. I have had individual worse pizzas elsewhere than what we had in Buenos Aires. (The pizza that gave us food poisoning in Peru comes to mind.)
But nowhere in the world have I encountered such an overall low standard of pizza, and especially not one that people are so proud of!
As you might guess from #3, the pizzas were just lakes of cheese. Not even good cheese. Not even when we went to well-recommended or highly rated pizzerias.
We weren’t able to find good pizzas in any restaurants in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Toppings were thrown on raw, instead of prepared, and baked on the pizza. (I know, lots of restaurants make this mistake, but it was especially painful when paired with the bland cheese lakes.)
The fugazzeta, which I had been so incredibly excited to try, turned out to be just like the other pizzas there: bland and full of way too much cheese. I can normally out-eat a teenage basketball player, but a couple slices of fugazzeta were enough to make me feel like I had consumed my calories for the week (and not particularly enjoyed them, either).
Buenos Aires’ One Saving Grace
Three days before we were due to leave Buenos Aires, we found a restaurant that we fell in love with.
The food was complex, flavorful, interesting, and well-balanced.
The dishes marked “spicy!” were actually spicy.
The seasoning level in every single dish was perfect; not salty, but not bland either.
It should probably come as no surprise that this wasn’t an Argentinian restaurant. Instead, it was a Japanese place. It was so good, and stood in such contrast to every other restaurant we had tried in Buenos Aires, that we walked the half hour to get there every single day for our last few days just to eat food with flavor.
Great food at a Japanese restaurant in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Important Notes:
I can see the arguments already.
“But you were vegetarian, and Argentina is all about the meat! You can’t judge a steakhouse by its salads.” Yes, fair enough! But Gustavo is a carnivore from Brazil. He grew up on amazing meat and has eaten steak all over the world, so even if you don’t trust my word, you can listen to his.
“What do you even know about good pizza?! Obviously NOTHING if you don’t think it’s supposed to be a bland cheese lake.” Let’s see: I worked in a couple of gourmet pizzerias for several years total. I write a pizza recipe blog. I’ve eaten pizza obsessively on every continent except Antarctica, including in the major pizza capitals (Italy, New York, Chicago, California, even Detroit). If you disagree with me, that’s fine, but let’s not stoop to pretending that I just don’t know better. :)
With all of that said, if you have recommendations for how to have a better food experience in Buenos Aires (or Argentina), please let us know in the comments! We loved other things about Argentina (like the tango lessons!) and may be back someday. If/when we are, we’d be delighted to have your insider tips on how to find flavorful foods.
Did we just get unlucky for a month and happen to go to bad restaurants each time, or always end up at places when the chef was having an off day? How can we (or other readers) have a better food experience in Buenos Aires?