Argentina's Parrilla Power
Great if you love meat, and even more exciting if you don’t!
Argentina was never on the top of my list. All I’d ever heard is: “Oh god, get ready for all the meat!” This was actually a big deterrent for me. For 25 years I was a vegetarian, and now I do eat meat, but very little. I’ll have some lasagna Bolognese or chicken on a salad, but I still want more vegetables on my plate than anything else. With Argentina’s main attraction being steak, I filed it under “not interested” long ago.
My trip planning often centers around food. It can easily be the main reason I decide to go to a new place. But this time it was Michiel’s work that brought us to Argentina. His company’s largest office worldwide is in Buenos Aires. Some of his closest colleagues are based here, and he’s never had a chance to meet them face-to-face. Of course, this is another factor that has always determined my itineraries: knowing locals on the ground.
Researching Buenos Aires
When I began researching the Buenos Aires food scene, it immediately got me excited. First, I was noticing all the bakeries, and bakeries are always my top priority. Typically, I try a new one every day, and I circle back to the favorites later in my stay. Since many of a new country’s bakery staples are totally unfamiliar to me, you have to be ok rolling the dice and losing. But when you win, it’s pretty sensational. It’s the pure joy of discovering a whole new category of bread, pastry, cake, or cookie.
BA has a crop of newer bakeries experimenting with different sourdoughs and grains, as well as the historic cafés that look as glamorous as they did in their heydays over 100 years ago. My friend Alex sent me some pictures from the pages of his favorite book on Buenos Aires: The Authentic Bars, Cafes, and Restaurants of Buenos Aires. This kickstarted more research about the extensive café culture of Argentina. It rivals Italy’s, but of course, that’s because they are closely tied—sixty percent of Argentines have Italian ancestry.
Café Culture in Argentina
Argentines love their cafés. They are buzzing all morning and afternoon, especially in the late afternoons for Merienda. Since dinnertime isn’t until 9 or 10 pm there’s a snack in the afternoon to tide everyone over. Coffee, medialunas (croissants that are buttery and sweet), and slim white bread sandwiches (similar to the tramezzino in Italy) are the norm, but I also spied lots of decadent desserts being shared. Brownies topped with dulce de leche, flans, cheesecakes, and many a flavor of budin were all in the mix. It’s a lovely tradition, and like quite a few things in Argentine daily life, it serves as a reminder to take a pause. I’m curious if they see it this way, but I certainly do.
Snacking, with vermouth in hand
Buenos Aires has some lovely cocktail bars (with Doppelgänger at the top of my list), but their cantinas and vermouth bars were more remarkable to me. We would often stop by intending to only have a drink and end up making a meal out of it. Like in Mexico, cantinas in Argentina are a place to have a drink with a variety of snacks. The traditional ones have all the Spanish tapas hits you’d recognize like tortilla española, olives, and papas bravas. Hot tip: In Buenos Aires, if you order a tortilla española you will always be asked how you’d like it cooked: loose or firm. I like it loose.
The vermouth bars have a similar, often overlapping menu, but feature vermouth made in-house that’s offered in cocktails, spritzes, and my favorite, simply over ice with a twist of orange. You should know that nearly anywhere you go in BA will offer a bottle of vermouth along with all the fixings (glass siphon with soda water, a bucket of ice, and citrus) so you can make your own spritzes at your leisure at your table. Genius!
La Fuerza became our favorite spot for vermouth. Their vermouth is made in Mendoza, at the Zuccardi winery, from “40 botanicals hand-harvested in the Andes”. They have a white, rosé, red, and a newly released Sideral, which is somewhere between rosé and red, with perhaps even more complexity and citrus than either. They also just released a version of their vermouths in spritzer form, canned. For all those cocktail nerds out there, these were the best-executed can cocktail I’ve had. Even though we were totally enamored with La Fuerza, we tried vermouth anywhere we could find it. Many restaurants have their own, made in-house, so always ask.
A Museum of Vermouth
I’d heard about a cantina that had a massive collection of vintage vermouth bottles, Yiyo El Zeneize, and after I saw their Instagram, I got even more intrigued. What sold me was the portraits of their staff, former staff, and even the neighbors, check it out here. That Sunday afternoon was Mother’s Day in Argentina and the whole restaurant was in full-on celebratory mode when we arrived.
Basstian welcomed us with a magical little drink in vintage sherry glasses and ended up giving us a tour of the place. Opened in 1921, it used to be a winery and shop, and we got to see the original wine fermentation tanks, as well as the cellar, which is still full of wine and vermouth. Next Basstian gave us some of their house vermouth, which was divine, and then asked if we wanted to try some vermouth from the 1960s? We gave an enthusiastic yes.
How about actual dinner?
Argentina is known for its parrillas, which refer both to the actual grill and to the restaurant or steakhouse you are eating in. Parrillas are metal grills, typically placed over a wood fire. Once the wood burns down and turns into hot coals, instead of cooking over an open flame, the asador (grillmaster) uses the hot, smoldering embers to cook things slower and longer.
As I mentioned, I had no interest in the steakhouses of Argentina, until I started looking at menus. Like American steakhouses, which I love because of their lengthy lists of veggie sides, those in BA seemed to follow suit. I had to inspect carefully though. Some have 4-6 versions of potatoes, and not much else. But many go beyond the potatoes and utilize their parrilla to cook vegetables AND CHEESE.
I started noticing “Provoleta” on most menus. What I found curious about it, was that it was often listed in the same column as the meat and cost as much as a steak. This made me think, well it can’t be provolone cheese, can it? Why would that cost as much as a steak?
Grilling… cheese?
Well, it is indeed provolone cheese, a huge round slab of it. And it doesn’t taste anything like the skimpy provolone slice you get in a deli sandwich. We ordered our first at the Kaiken winery in Mendoza. It arrived hot, in a metal pan, with roasted eggplant, tomatoes, and herbs on top. The outer layer was puffed and crispy, almost crystalized, and the inside was soft and melty. If you’ve ever fried cheese in a cast iron pan, the entire outer layer tasted exactly like that.
We ordered five things: empanadas, provoleta, beans, gnocchi, and dessert. Oh and wine! The empanadas were great, with a delicate, pastry-like dough, and so juicy inside, the sauce wasn’t needed. The beans were a combo of shelled beans and green beans, all grilled, sitting on top of some goat cheese. It was sprinkled with fried quinoa, doused with olive oil, and had a pencil-thin sliced flatbread, also grilled, next to it.
The gnocchi came with a substantial char from the grill and had liberal hunks of parmesan, carrot chips, tender beans, and a zinger of lemon sauce. For dessert, it was hard to pick and our server, who we were told by the sommelier was the mother to the entire staff, said, without hesitation, the crepe. I couldn’t imagine grilling a crepe, but you listen to mom. This crepe was quite something, it was filled with dulce de leche, formed into a disc, and grilled on both sides. Again, there was a crystallization, where the consistency of the crepe changed entirely from soft to crisp. Tasting both textures in one bite was pure magic, as was the charred orange that came with it.
Hunting the Char
We had only arrived in Argentina a few days earlier, but the power of the parrilla was crystal clear. When I was a vegetarian my excitement for anything grilled was through the roof. That rich smokiness, when applied to asparagus, ears of corn, tofu, or pizza, made everything more delicious. I craved it, and friends teased me that I was craving meat, but it wasn’t that. I wanted the char.
We were at the Kaiken by pure chance. Michiel’s colleague asked her sommelier friend for recommendations in Mendoza. I was so behind on my research, I made the reservation at Ramos Generales without even looking into the place. I hadn’t noticed this was a Francis Mallmann restaurant. Mallmann, who I had just watched on a Bourdain episode, cooking everything outdoors, at Garzon, his restaurant in rural Uruguay. I had put some effort into getting reservations there, but communication was murky, and ultimately it was on hiatus due to the pandemic.
The one and only Mallmann
One can’t really talk about cooking in Argentina without bringing up Mallmann because he, in large part, has helped define it and share it with the world. I would recommend reading up on him if you are interested, he’s a very entertaining dandy who currently is living exactly how he wants on a remote island in Patagonia. What is remarkable to me is how he uses fire to forge something new. The crepe and provoleta’s depth of texture came by way of time, patience, and fire. Like the simplicity of Italian cooking, Mallmann’s simplicity is ingredient + technique. And the joy is seeing how his technique changes everything it comes into contact with.
Clearly, luck was on our side to get introduced to parrillas in this unexpected way, but every parrilla was exciting. I had the expected veggies: carrots, red pepper, potatoes, sweet potatoes, zucchini, eggplant, asparagus, and onions, but also the unexpected: endive, salsify, pears, broccoli, and artichokes. But again, it wasn’t about the vegetables, it was about the veggies in conjunction with the grillmaster's techniques. With the right technique, even a carrot can become otherworldly, and it did, on three separate occasions during our month in Argentina.
I’m hoping you can see that this former vegetarian wants to right the wrongs of her naivety and lack of understanding about Argentina’s cooking. It’s a deep, rich art, that is as much about the history and working with what you’ve got, as it is about a great steak. Also, I felt like it catered directly to me, fulfilling all my wildest vegetable fantasies! I’ve loved the grill all my life, probably due to my father being an extremely talented grillmaster himself. However, I’d feel remiss if I wrote about parrillas without saying one word about the meat. So I’ll let Michiel. He had his own, multiple revelations, as he sampled as much as he could handle in Buenos Aires, Mendoza, and Uruguay.
The official meat report from Michiel:
In the US, I’ve found “my” steak: New York Strip, medium-rare, just salt and pepper. No sauce, because the meat should speak for itself. Following this logic, when we first got to Argentina I resisted all the chimichurri. I’ve always disliked it. But in Argentina, as it turns out, the chimichurri supports the meat in wonderful ways and can bring out more of the flavor, instead of masking it.
Regarding flavor, the most surprising thing was that some of the rarer cuts had a buttery, blue-cheese undertone, which brings back memories of the smells from meat markets in Mexico. Previously, I found those smells off-putting, but now I realize they can be an indicator of quality.
And the biggest revelation: the Entraña cut (skirt steak). It came highly recommended for its rich flavor. The first time I had it, it came out very tough, which ruined any flavor advantage it might have had. Days later, a very insistent server recommended it to me again, but my previous disappointment made me opt for a safer option (a Brazilian Picanha cut—also excellent by the way). Thankfully she surprised me by bringing out a piece of entraña on-the-house, to ensure I wouldn’t miss out. [Erin: Bless her!!] It was one of the most delicious (and tender!) cuts I’ve ever had.
I have since learned this thin, long cut is easy to overcook, which makes it very tough. So be sure to ask for it rare!
A grillmaster, reformed?
In studying up on Mallmann to write this, I found out he’s recently turned a new corner with his cooking. With his growing fame, he started hearing from fans who politely requested he broaden his scope beyond meat. Apparently, they provided an education for him about his environmental duty, and challenged him to integrate more sustainability into his practices. He listened to their feedback and has begun sketching out a world for himself where less meat and fish are consumed. To the surprise of many, he’s even released a new, vegetarian cookbook: Green Fire. Here’s a quote from a review in Food & Wine:
"You can make a fire in the floor. It can be inside of a Weber kettle. It can be in the grill. It can be in the forest," he said. "But basically the success of cooking with fire is patience and your intuition to understand what fire does to your food. It's a process, it's a craft. You can read my books, but you will not learn it. You have to practice it. You have to go stand, watch a fire, and understand it. There's no way out. I can give you advice but I can't give you a shock or an injection of fire knowledge."
I thought a “live” update at the end of my posts might be fun, so I’m trying it out today. I’m writing you from the Hotel Viñas Queirolo in Ica, Peru. This week is vacation, and we are road-tripping along the coast, desert, and wine country of Peru. Tomorrow we head to Lima for a week before returning to the U.S.
Here’s where I’ve been editing the newsletter from…
A loving tribute to a delicious location!