Buenos Aires Food Tour

In the post about my time in Jardin Botánico Carlos Thays this morning, I alluded to a three-hour tour that I booked for today at noon. In that post, I suggested you could probably have guessed what type of tour it was based on its start time and duration. If you hadn’t guessed then, you will no doubt have figured it out from the title of this post.

Those of you who read and remembered the posts from my Asia trip late in 2024, will recall that, while in Bangkok, I took a food tour. I enjoyed it so much that I also took food tours in Chiang Mai and Taipei.

The company that ran the tour in Bangkok, Secret Food Tours, also runs food tours in several cities around the world, including Buenos Aires. I thought so highly of the tour in Bangkok that I had to book the one here.

(By the way, Secret Food Tours did not pay me anything for the mention above, neither in cash nor in-kind. It probably doesn’t even know I exist, let alone know about this post. However, if it does want to pay me, I’d happily accept.)

Before the Buenos Aires Food Tour

I arrived at the starting point about five minutes before noon. Two couples were sitting there. I knew I was in the right place because they were speaking English, and I heard “food tour” a couple of times in their conversation.

Contrary to my nature, I spoke up and confirmed that they were indeed waiting for the Buenos Aires food tour. Upon confirming that, and me replying that I was too, they introduced themselves. The couples weren’t associated with each other in any way other than showing up for the tour. Both couples were from the United States, one from Indiana and the other from California.

Then it was my turn. I gave them my name and said I was from Toronto, Canada. The immediate response from the others was to apologize for what their country was doing to mine. (For the benefit of anyone who might stumble on this in the future, it’s now March 2025. Donald Trump, the evil president of the United States, has launched a trade war against Canada and has been talking about making Canada the 51st state. Canadians are, for very much the most part, furious about that.)

One of the couples mentioned that they’ve got a trip to Canada (Alberta) coming up soon. I told them that they’d enjoy Canada as long as they don’t mention Donald Trump because we’re touchy about that subject. They fully understood and sympathized.

While we were talking, we each got a WhatsApp text from the tour guide saying that he was stuck in traffic and would be a few minutes late.

A couple of minutes later, a family of five arrived, also for the Buenos Aires Food Tour. They introduced themselves as being from Texas. My heart sank. Texas is mostly a deep-red state, where Trump got a lot of support. But neither politics nor the Canada/US situation came up before the tour guide arrived, and I definitely didn’t want to get into it.

Once the guide, Eliab (he told us to call him Eli), arrived, and after he apologized profusely a few times for being a few minutes late, we were off on the tour. I will get to the food tour anon, but let me skip to the very end to finish the above story before doing that.

At the last stop of the tour, we all stood around talking for a bit before going off on our separate ways. The father of the Texas family came up to me and said, “You’re Canadian, right?”

I started to panic. I thought I was in for some berating or deriding.

That’s not what happened.

He immediately said that he felt the need to apologize strongly for their president. He said that when most people hear that they’re from Texas, they assume they’re Trump supporters. They’re not. Quite the opposite. They didn’t vote for him, they hate him, and they hope, although he admitted it was a faint hope, that Trump’s supporters will finally come around.

Canada does have many friends and supporters among Americans. Bravo and thank you!

The Buenos Aires Food Tour

Like the one that Secret Food Tours runs in Bangkok, its Buenos Aires Food Tour is a walking tour. It took us through parts of the Palermo district of Buenos Aires. As I mentioned in my morning post, Palermo is a lovely, leafy area.

Eli told us that Palermo is the largest neighbourhood in the capital district of Buenos Aires. It has a few distinct sub-neighbourhoods within it, including an old section, a new section, and “Palermo Soho.”

Palermo Soho is somewhat like the New York and London SoHos in that it used to be a downtrodden area, but it has evolved into the hip district of the city.

Eli is a journalist. He studied journalism in Texas, which I assume is where he honed his English. He currently works as a radio journalist at night. Because of his job, he has a tremendous interest in the political history of Argentina.

At our first stop, before we got our food, he pulled out a map and told us about the geography and climate of each of the diverse districts of Argentina. Then, at other stops, he told us about the general history and particularly the political history of the country. It was very interesting.

Despite the information being engaging, this was, after all, a Buenos Aires food tour, not an Argentinian history and geography lesson. So, let’s delve into the culinary delights.

Empanadas

The first stop was a small restaurant where we had empanadas, which are, according to Eli and what I’ve read, ubiquitous throughout Argentina. Many other countries have similar foods.

If you’re not familiar with empanadas, they’re sealed pastries stuffed with food of some sort inside. The pastries are not of the sweet and/or sticky sort you might think of when you hear the word. It’s a dry-bread dough. And they can come with a wide variety of foods inside. Even if you are familiar with them, that’s still what they are.

Eli explained that empanadas can come in a variety of shapes. But if they’re a rough semi-circle shape, with distinctive crimping on the rounded edge, they always contain the same thing: beef. If they are of a different shape, they could contain anything. You have to ask what it is.

We each got one beef and one corn empanada. I can’t say I’m thrilled with the dough of empanadas; it’s too dry for me. But the whole package of both of the empanadas was very tasty and well worth having again.

Pastry Shop

The next stop was a small pastry shop. Eli pointed out the various types of pastries they sold, and he talked a little about them. We didn’t eat anything in the shop. Instead, Eli ordered a bag of something that I didn’t see for us to have later.

Steak

The next stop was at a grill house. Out near the front, where the meat is grilled, Eli pointed out some of the cuts of meat, both cow and pork, that they have. The guy behind the counter enthusiastically brought out various cuts to show us, without Eli even asking him to do so. I assume it’s a regular stop on the Buenos Aires Food Tour, but Eli seemed surprised by how enthusiastically the guy was hauling out just about everything he had behind the counter today.

We then went into the seating area of the restaurant, which is located in a former paper mill. It’s charming.

Steak is a really big thing here. People eat a lot of it. Because they have a lot of cattle ranching in Argentina, it’s relatively inexpensive. And the portions here are typically huge.

Take a look at the picture I posted here. Eli said that’s normally a portion for one. Because it was a food tour, not a single-stop, gorge-yourself-on-steak tour, the ten of us (Eli didn’t eat) shared two portions.

Some of the steak was medium-rare and some medium. And it was scrumptious.

Pastry Stop

We next sat on a ledge next to a park. There, Eli told us about the disappearances brought about by the dictatorship back in the day, of people critical of the dictatorship. He then gave us the pastries he bought at the pastry shop.

I’ve forgotten the Spanish name Eli gave for the pastry, but it sounded like it had something close to the word “cannon” in it. There is a class of pastries in Buenos Aires (maybe all of Argentina, I’m not sure) that are baked in the shapes of some objects related to the revolution. These, indeed, were intended to represent cannons.

They were cylinders stuffed with a semi-sweet filling. I’m not certain what it was, but I’m pretty sure it was some sort of fruit jelly. The cylinder of dough surrounding it was reminiscent of pound-cake dough for me. But I’m not good at discerning foods, so other people might describe it differently.

I didn’t take a picture of the pastry, so don’t bother looking for it here. Sorry about that.

Hard Cider

The next stop was in a funky bar in a building with a collection of small businesses. There, we had a hard cider made from apples from the Patagonia region of Argentina. The cider was a little bitter, but quite good.

The pouring of the cider was fun. The cider came out of a cask with a spout in it. The waitress put the glass close to the spout, opened the spigot, and as the cider flowed out, the waitress moved the glass steadily away from the cask, following the arc of the flowing liquid until the glass was appropriately filled. Eli explained that this was to reduce the amount of foam that formed above the cider.

The waitress repeated this show for each of our glasses. (There were only seven glasses. The children of the Texas family were all under the drinking age. I forget if they said that the oldest was 15 or 17. They had sodas.)

Chorizo Sausage

The next stop was at a small restaurant where we had what, for me, was the very tastiest of the day. It was a sandwich made of chorizo pork sausage. I regret that I’m not better, or even halfway good, at describing tastes, because I loved it. The sausage wasn’t spicy, but it had a bit of a bite to it, and the flavour burst in my mouth.

I wish I had more to say about it because, while I very much liked everything else, I loved this.

Maté

Our last stop was at a chocolate shop. They make all of their chocolates in-house. However, the chocolate itself is sourced from elsewhere because they don’t grow cacao in Argentina. But all of the other ingredients are sourced from Argentina.

We did have chocolate, but we weren’t there primarily for that. We were there to learn about and have Argentine maté, which is a drink vaguely similar to tea, but only vaguely so. The base of the drink is made of dried herbs.

The closest I can come to phonetically spelling in English what the word maté sounds like is mawteh. I’m not very good at that sort of thing. Or much of anything, for that matter, but never mind that.

There are varieties of them, but maté cups are considered to be special. Accompanying the cup is a straw that has a bend in it and a spoon-shaped, but without the concave surface, filter on the end opposite from the sipping hole.

There is a whole ritual that each maté drinker has to go through. First, you take the dried herbs and fill your cup about three-quarters full. Yes, three-quarters. None of this wimpy little teabag’s worth for them.

Next, you cover the top of the cup with one of your hands and tip the cup upside down with the other.

Then you shake the cup up and down vigorously. This is to get the dust of the maté mixture from the bottom to the top.

You then slowly tilt the cup right way up. You do this slowly because when the cup is right way up, the maté mixture should form a slope down into the bottom of the cup.

Then you pour a few drops of water into the cup so the maté will cohere. You then use the filter end of the straw to shape the maté into a wall, filling one side of the cup. When that’s done, you push the filter end of the straw under the bottom of the wall of maté, fill the cup full with hot water, and sip the maté, refilling the water as desired.

Because you put in so much maté, Argentinians generally keep their maté going for several cups over time. They replace the maté only when it starts to lose its flavour.

There are also some rules about how you’re supposed to serve maté when you have people over, but I won’t repeat them here because I’ve forgotten most of them.

I found the maté had a taste that was similar to green tea, but a little more bitter. However, that bitterness decreased with the second filling I had. Eli told us that the flavour would change a little with each cup, so I was expecting that.

At each place setting at our table in the shop, there was also a foil-wrapped confection that was a spongy cookie and filling surrounded by dark chocolate. It was delicious.

The proprietor of the shop also gave us small samples of a sheet-chocolate made with Malbec wine, which is the most common wine in Argentina. They first dehydrate the wine and then mix the wine crystals in with the dark chocolate that’s made into sheets. It too was delicious.

That was the last stop on the Buenos Aires Food Tour. It ran closer to three-and-a-half hours rather than the advertised three hours. And we got started a few minutes late. Nevertheless, I still had a little time to see some more stuff. I’ll save that for a short post that I’ll publish soonish.

If you’re ever in Buenos Aires, I’d recommend taking the tour.