Pampas & Beaches Food & Traditional Cuisine

This is the part of Argentina that gave the country its reputation for beef, and the reputation is earned.

Cattle on grass across the Pampas produced a beef culture unlike any other: consumption per head among the highest in the world, a butchery vocabulary with cuts that do not exist elsewhere, and the asado as a social institution rather than a meal. It is cooked over wood embers rather than gas or charcoal, slowly, by one person, and eaten in sequence — offal and sausages first, then the ribs and the larger cuts.

The other great influence is Italian. Millions of Italian immigrants arrived between 1880 and 1930, and the result is that Argentines eat pasta, pizza and milanesa as everyday food, in versions that have diverged from the originals into something of their own.

And then there is dulce de leche, the caramelised milk that goes into, onto and between almost everything sweet in the country, and which the Pampas claims to have invented by accident.

Asado is the region’s whole culinary argument: tira de asado short ribs, vacio flank, entrana skirt, chorizo, morcilla and sweetbreads, cooked over embers and served with chimichurri and little else. Salt is the only seasoning on the meat.

Milanesa, a breaded beef cutlet, plain or a la napolitana with ham, tomato and melted cheese — the single most eaten dish in Argentine homes.

Empanadas bonaerenses, baked, with beef, olive and egg, and a thinner pastry than the northern versions.

Alfajores: two soft biscuits sandwiched with dulce de leche and coated in chocolate or rolled in coconut. Mar del Plata has an entire industry built on them and every family has a preferred brand.

Tandil’s cured meats and sheep cheeses, which are the best charcuterie in Argentina.

Also: puchero, a boiled beef and vegetable stew; fresh pasta on Sundays; and facturas, the pastries eaten with coffee.

The asado is the social form, and everything about it is codified — who cooks, the order of the cuts, the fact that the asador does not sit down and is brought his wine. Being invited to a family asado is the best thing that can happen to a visitor here.

Parrillas — grill restaurants — are everywhere, and in the country towns they are unpretentious rooms where the meat is the point and the wine is house Malbec.

Pulperias at Areco and Mercedes serve salami, cheese and wine at a wooden counter in rooms that have not changed in a century.

Tandil’s picada: a board of local salami, cheese and olives, eaten before dinner with beer, which the town has made its speciality.

Mate is drunk constantly, in parks, at work and on the beach, and thermos flasks are carried everywhere.

Meal times: lunch at one, dinner from nine-thirty and later at weekends.

The Pampas is not a wine region in the classic Argentine sense — the vineyards are in the desert west — but two things here are worth knowing.

The first is that a new cool-climate wine region has emerged on this plain since the 2000s. Vineyards near Chapadmalal and around the Tandilia hills, close to the Atlantic and cooled by sea air, are producing Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and sparkling wine of genuine quality at a latitude and altitude that Argentine winemaking had ignored entirely. It is small, experimental and increasingly taken seriously.

The second is that this is where the wine is drunk. Buenos Aires and its province consume the majority of Argentine output, and the culture of drinking Malbec with beef at every meal belongs here as much as to Mendoza.

Vermouth is a strong local tradition, drunk as an aperitif with soda and a picada, and has had a substantial revival.

Fernet with cola is the national mixed drink, and mate outranks all of it.