Our dinner at Alto el Fuego, a popular Bariloche steakhouse, is the first time I can remember asking a waitress to box up a salad to go. With all that beef — sizzling, juicy, lovely beef — we didn’t touch a single piece of lettuce.
The greens had a hard enough time competing with the toasty brown empanadas that landed on our table, each filled with delicately spiced beef or salted ham and gooey cheese. But once our waitress set down a wood platter displaying two crusted, wood-fired cuts of steak — a filet facing Katrina, a ribeye facing me — the salad’s fate was sealed.
Argentina loves beef. This is a country whose former president once told a U.S. magazine, “Tell your readers, ‘Don’t come to my country if they’re vegetarian.'” Last year the international press made a big deal of the declining state of Argentina’s beef industry, pointing out that exports have fallen, along with consumption. The average Argentine these days eats only — only! — 121 pounds of beef a year, down 100 pounds-a-person from the mid-1950s, if you can believe that.
Even so, after a week here, I feel confident reporting that vegetables remain the clear underdog in Argentina, though we did have lunch one afternoon at a fantastic vegetarian restaurant (shhhh!). After our excellent dinner at Alto el Fuego, I for one pledge to do my part in the next few weeks to help Argentina reclaim its rightful title from Uruguay as the world’s most carnivorous beef eaters!
ninety days in argentina 