Foods of Argentina 🇦🇷 — Family Vagabonders

Last November, we spent three months in Argentina, the second largest country in South America. Contrary to its current economy situation (2023/24), Argentina is spectacular. As usual, one of my favorite aspects is the food. Here are some of the best foods in Argentina:

Delicious empanadas at Oveja Negra in Bariloche!

Empanadas: Maybe one of the most well-known Argentine dishes, empanadas are my favorite savory dish (we’ll get to the sweet stuff later, I promise you ;^). The outside: a deliciously golden and flaky “shell” and there are a wide variety of insides. Here are my favorites: chicken (pollo), jam and cheese (jamon y queso), cheeseburger (basically just beef with a cheesy flavor), and sometimes the blue cheese empanadas (really depended on the restaurant, as most of them just tasted like mozzarella). It’s a lot of hit-or-miss, but for fast food empanada places, Brozziano is one of the best. For my birthday (which we spent in Buenos Aires), we went to El Sanjuanino, which has incredible (artisanal) empanadas. Definitely a must! If you are in Bariloche, definitely try the empanadas at Oveja Negra. They have some unique flavors and are amazing!
Choripan: Such a delicious sandwich! It’s so simple, but when you have a good choripan, the combo of the crispy and fresh bread and the deliciously cooked chorizo (maybe a little bit of chimichurri) is just absolutely fantastic. Outside of the San Telmo market is a really good choripan place called Nuestra Parrilla.
Chimichurri: Although this is not really an Argentine meal, it comes with most meals. It’s a sauce of parsley, vinegar, oregano, and olive oil. The flavor is fantastic and it’s really easy to make. It goes really well with choripan, parrilla, and more!
Parrilla: This is a huge Argentine custom. It’s like a barbeque, but it’s not just about the meat; but the whole day is spent next to the grill, hanging out with friends, eating little bits throughout the entire day. Every Friday the stores are packed with people buying meat (a lot of times they get the entire sheep!) then on the weekends, the smell of the parrilla is everywhere. It is such a fun custom and the meat itself is fantastic.

Those are the best Argentine savory dishes, and of course, a sweet section was necessary. The desserts are absolutely fantastic!

Dulce de Leche: A basic component of a lot of Argentine desserts, dulce de leche is originally from Argentina (although Brazil, France, and Paraguay all claim they invented it; don’t trust them, it is purely Argentine). It’s literally just milk and sugar cooked slowly for over an hour to get it deliciously like caramel but even better.
Alfajores: The second most popular dessert in Argentina (the first being dulce de leche), alfajores are two crumbly “cookies” - it’s kind of hard to call them cookies because they.. just aren’t - with a layer of dulce de leche in between them. Normally, they are rolled in coconut flakes so that the coconut sticks to the dulce de leche layer. This is my favorite dessert from Argentina :)
Torta Alfajor or Rogel Cake: Oh. My. Gosh. This cake. For my birthday, we got one of these cakes. It weighed over 20 pounds. No joke. The Rogel Cake is basically a layered cake with crispy pancakes (not the typical American ones, the Belgian pancakes that are super skinny) and dulce de leche. On top of the layers, there is a huge (I mean huge) amount of whipped meringue. As much as it is good after a slice or two, having a cake that big took us weeks to finish, especially because of the amount of meringue, it was hard to eat more than a small piece. We even made waffles out of the meringue, shared with friends, and had plenty left over. We got the cake from Sasha's Pasteles, which has tons of other delicacies!

The delicious (and huge) Rogel Cake we had for my birthday..

Although it’s not a food (savory or sweet), Maté is also a huge part of Argentine cuisine. It’s a herbal hot drink that is basically like Argentina’s version of coffee. Everyone drinks it everywhere :)