Eating is our business, and business is good!

I am a bit of a foodie, and Buenos Aires has lots to offer. There is a strong italian influence, lots of parillas (grills/steak houses), great traditional brick oven pizzerias and a wide variety of modern fusion, asian, indian and french. Beautiful restaurants in beautiful locations. Often eating outdoors on some patio that is over looking a park or street. There are very few fast food places here. It is something that is noticable right away. We have seen a few MacD's and one or two burger kings, but most places are of the sit down type. There is a huge demand for food delivery here. Virtually every restaurant, from the corner pizza place to the high end italian place have at least one if not a whole fleet of bicycle and motorbike delivery people. There is also an ice cream parlour on almost every corner. They really take their ice cream seriously here.

We have taken to drinking a bottle of wine with pretty much every meal. There are so many different winerys in Argentina that we try a new bottle almost every time. Vino tinto (red wine) in the romantic dark italian eateries. Vino blanco on the patio's under an umbrella over looking the park. Tracey is pretty sure that I am trying to turn her into an alcoholic. She is not fighting to hard though. We went to a dinner tango show and unlimited amounts of red wine was included in the price. Coffee however, was extra. This strikes me as being very Argentinian.

There is quite a language barrier with the menus. Tracey finds this quite vexing. She is the type to deliberate over multiple menu choices and has to ask my opinion, the servers opinion all the while scanning the food of the other diners to see "what looks good". She does when the menu is in english, imagine the problems with a spanish only menu. There have been a few moments of shear panic when the waiter arrives, doesn't speak english, and choices have to be made. We often just resort to pointing at something and hoping for the best.

The service here is great as well. There are professional waiters who arrange things for you and really take their job seriously. We have met very few waitresses, it is most often older gentlemen. It is quite a shock to the system after being used to the Edmonton servers who usually give you an eye roll if you ask for more water.

Final thoughts

- I have through persitance,discovered the joy of facing life with a slight wine buzz at all times

- I want to have sex with mushroom risotto, it's that good

- An ice cream parlour on every street corner is very sound city planning

- If we lived here full time we would both weigh 400lbs, but strangely there don't seem to be any overweight Portenos

- Thin crust margerita pizza with fresh toppings cooked in a brick oven beats the crap out of deep dish loaded pizza in the school yard and sends it crying to the teacher

- Argentinians have a strange love for hard, crusty bread

- People eat late here. Like really late. Lunch at 3 pm and supper time is around 10 or 11 pm. Most places don't even open until 8 pm.