Sounds Good on Paper

Tag: beef

  • Tilcara – Taking a break from cow…to eat llama

    Normally, we would never go anywhere that was over 3 hours away on a day trip.  That would be like going from Seattle to Salem, OR or Chicago to Cedar Rapids, IA and back in a day. But, Argentina is large and it takes  longer to get everywhere on a bus.

    We made sure to get on the correct bus this time. I asked every single driver at the station, multiple times.  Poor Jeff was had to pretend he didn’t know me.

    We were the only ones doing a day trip, everyone else were college aged Argentinian backpackers. We could tell because besides backpacks, they all had mate gourdes, thermos, and guitars.

    They showed the movie Happy Madison dubbed in Spanish.  You don’t really need to know Spanish or be 21 to enjoy the movie, but it helps.

    some of us enjoyed the movie more than others

    Once we got to the town it worth a 4 hour bus ride and Adam Sandler.

    Tilcara is an amazing little town nestled in the mountains in the middle of the desert.  The backpackers and tourists seemed to outnumber the locals by about 10 to 1, but it didn’t matter.  Even in this tiny town we had entire streets almost to ourselves.

    For lunch we went to a restaurant that served “regional specialties.”     After having so much beef it was a nice change to see llama (pronounced jama) on the menu.

    We had the choice of several  llama dishes, we went with the llama casserole.

    Just having some veggies and not just a hunk of meat on a plate was nice.  The llama was tender and flavorful, tasted nothing like chicken.

    I think llama might have once been a local dish, but no one other than tourists and gourmet foodies are eating it now. It’s probably similar to rabbit. You can get rabbit in fancy restaurants in the US, but very very few people in the US are sitting down to rabbit sloppy joes or rabbit tacos at home.  Traditional or not, it was super good food on a super long but fun day trip.

  • Eating an entire cow (not in one sitting) part 8 – T Bone and Short Ribs

    There really isn’t much to report on the eating of a T Bone steak called – beef de costilla and short ribs called tira de asado. Both were delicious.

    The thing I found most interesting the atmosphere in the parilla.  We went to a restaurant called El Viejo Jack. Not only is it highly recommended in guide books and on Trip Advisor, it’s also recommended by locals.

    The restaurant itself was your basic local parilla with the most glaring fluoresent lights ever.   We’ve noticed this is pretty typical of local parillas.

    could it have been any brighter?

    It was funny to eat a delicious steak, drink a bottle of really good malbac, and have great attentive service all while feeling like we were in a doctor’s examining room.

    It was in sharp contrast to a restaurant we had gone to the night before.

    Jose Balcarse was also highly recommended by guidebooks.  It was also really good, but I don’t think there were any locals in the restaurant. Even the waitress, who spoke fluent English was from Uruguay.

    this photo is directly off their website

    One thing it did really well, besides the food was the ambiance.  The low lighting and exposed brick walls reminded me of restaurants back home.   The food at both places were amazing. One seemed really authentic, local and inexpensive.  The other – gourmet  and  touristy, but you didn’t feel like you were at the DMV.

    You can really see the contrast in the below videos.

    Video at parilla.

    video at gourmet tourist restaurant.

  • Eating an entire cow (not in one sitting) part 7 – cow heart

    We chose the restaurant Monumental for our next beef adventure.   We chose it for several reasons:  it’s near our apartment, has outdoor seating, looks like a castle.

    I had planned to eat mollejas (sweat breads also known as glands) but the waiter was completely freaked out that I was ordering only sweatbreads for dinner.  He didn’t think this was an appropriate dinner. I didn’t either, but assumed they’d be inedible and I’d be going out for dinner #2 at McDonalds afterward.

    He suggested corazon which is beef heart.   I was little apprehensive so we also ordered lots of wine, a “ensalada Americana,” a backup pork chop and I made sure Jeff was ordering a big enough steak that I could mooch off him if needed.

    The heart really wasn’t that bad.  It sort of tasted like a weird cut of steak. Now the salad, on the other hand, was totally weird. Lots of corn and white stuff which was either the worst cheese in the world, or a strange vegetable.

    My favorite part of dinner was observing the family next to us.  It was past 11:30pm and an entire family including a baby, toddler, and nanny were enjoying dinner.  At around 12:30am we had to go home, we were yawning, but the family was still on dessert.

  • Eating an Entire cow (not in one sitting) part 6

    Our guidebooks talk about all kinds of scams that can happen in Argentina.  Cab drivers give out counterfeit bills, thieves wait at ATM machines,  pick pockets throw mustard on your shoe.  So far none of these things have come even close to happening.

    The only scam so far, has been the old “this matambre steak is cow shoulder,” trick.

    The restaurant looks innocent enough, but since they don’t have a menu,  the waitress just told us what they were serving that day — matambre. When we asked what part of the cow that was, she said pointed to her shoulder.

    Several things could have happened:

    1. it really was shoulder, but she just called it matambre
    2. it was flank steak which she thought came from the shoulder of a cow.
    3. she had a sore shoulder and was massaging it while taking our order.
    4. she was trying to trick me.

    Now that I think about it, I’m not sure cows even have shoulders.      Later when I googled matambre I got this.

    Matambre is a beef dish from Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. Of an Italian style, it is a rolled flank steak filled with vegetables, eggs and herbs that is then boiled or oven-roasted. (from Wikipedia).

    So obviously, she tricked me into eating flank steak.  The confusing thing is, there was no roll, vegetables, eggs or herbs. It was just a slab of meat. And, the other weird thing is it was super light, almost white.   After much time on the internet comparing my photo to other photos of matambre, I’m pretty sure it was flank steak. You can’t really mind eating a flank steak twice.

    doesn't this look more like a shoulder than a flank?

    Although, I’ve had a lot of flank steak both on this trip and in Seattle and it’s never looked like this.  But, it was super good, so no matter what it is, I see lots of matambre in my future.

    Notice how I had to edit out me saying “this is cow shoulder.”

  • Eating an Entire Cow (not in one sitting) part 5

    We spent our last night in Buenos Aires at the same restaurant we went to the first night.   Here’s what we’ve learned in a month in Buenos Aires.

    • 10:30 is a good time to go out for dinner.  Midnight is not.  They were done for the night, but still seated us.

    • Our Spanish still needs work.  We ordered 3 different steaks. When they came one turned out to be chicken.

    • Steaks taste a lot better than organs (at least the one organ I’ve tried so far).  We got a flank and skirt steak. Both were really good.
    • They don’t call it skirt steak here. Jeff tried to buy a “lomo de falda” at a butcher the next day which made the butcher laugh.
    • Pictures of gauchos holding giant knives should not scare you.

    • You need to use caution when salting.  Salt shakers run really fast here.
    • Dulce de leche ice cream rocks