Siga La Vaca!

Before I even arrived in Argentina my friend had told me about a restaurant called Siga La Vaca, an all-you-can-eat steak house in Puerto Madero. My friend Adam raved about it, and for six months I tried to get over there. Even though two different visitors have come, in addition to my parents, I still hadn’t made it, but finally last night I went with my friends to the famed restaurant.

After a late start on the day and walking around the San Telmo fair we moseyed over to Puerto Madero, where the chilly sunset blew in a stench from the river that was something awful. Even though it was way too early for dinner, I had built up Siga La Vaca so much that they were hungry for it. We walked into the restaurant 10 minutes before 7 pm, but already there were some people left over from lunch rush. The prices had risen—instead of $50 pesos that I thought I would pay, it was $72 (the price also rises on the weekends).

All you can eat comes with the salad bar with enough choices alone to make a whole meal, a liter of wine, beer, or soda (per person), and all the steak you could ever want. Oh yeah, and if you still had room, dessert. After tempting our taste buds with the salad bar options we hit the grill. A long front grill exposed a literal mountain of meat, with just about everything you could imagine. Chicken to intestines were available for the taking, and we helped ourselves well.

I stared with some bife de chorizo while the other guys got a portion of vacío. We all shared what we had, and after giving ourselves enough time to digest went up for more. This time we devised a plan to maximize what we’d try, so we all got something differet. I got chicken, Carrie got chorizo (sausage), Matt got bondiola (pork), and Amy got Patagonian lamb. It was a festival of gluttony.

With a combination of the two bottles of wine and all the meat, we started getting sluggish and hit the wall. But we had to continue, so three more plates were put down on the table filled with more bondiola and bife de chorizo. It was just too good. Finally we decided that we could take no more. We were going to explode or fall asleep at the table. The restaurant was now packed, so we didn’t feel so alone or fat by ourselves.

As Matt and Carrie stepped outside for a smoke, Amy and I ordered from the dessert menu, which surprisingly had a lot of options. For an all-you-can-eat place, it was really good. And since my friends came in from Ecuador where there aren’t too many options, they were in heave. When Matt and Carrie realized that we still had dessert to eat they let out a sigh as if saying “no more!” Even the dessert was excellent, though by that point we were all in pain. We looked at the clock and saw that we’d been eating for two hours.

Rather than deal with walking to the subway or taking a bus we just took the quick way out and got a taxi home, where we crashed on the couch to watch TV and moan from over-eating. It’s good to do that once in a while, but not too often. So finally after 6 months I discovered this restaurant. It was worth the wait.

Siga La Vaca is on Alicia Moreau de Justo 1714, Puerto Madero.

Steakhouse, Buenos Aires

For a while I was concerned that some of my coworkers hated me. There are two sides of the office, one being younger and more talkative, the other a bit older and quieter. I'm on the quiet side, and for the most part, no one spoke to me for 6 weeks. Suddenly on Monday I was invited to have coffee at the end of the day with the other guys on my side of the office, which I take as a sign that the haze is now over. For one reason or another, maybe it was just a test.

During the conversation the guys asked me all about steak and what I've eaten. I haven't had much experience with the Argentinian grilling, and they invited me out for lunch on Friday to try different kinds of meat. They go out to eat lunch together every day while I eat at my desk, so I was pretty happy that I was invited. We went to a parilla that was packed with business suits and skirts. So packed, in fact, that we had to sit at the bar.

One of my coworkers spoke quickly to the waiter and ordered four different kinds of meat that I had never heard of. I explained that while we have different cuts of meat in the U.S., it's nothing like down here, and I couldn't match up the different names with my own personal knowledge. The first dish brought out was a sausage and some grilled cheese--provolone I think. I'm not a culinary whiz, but I know good food when I eat it, and this food was above good.

There were three kinds of sauces: chimichurri, which is about the only thing put on steak here, if something is put on, a red sauce that tasted similar to the aji I used to get at La Viña restaurant in Cuenca, and a tangy tomato and onion sauce. They warned me that the red sauce was spicy, but Argentinians don't know anything about spice, so I piled it on as they watched and expected water to form from my eyes. Of course it was mild as mayonnaise, and they seemed impressed. The interesting thing is that the only way for that sauce to taste the way it did would be to have tomate de arbol, or tree tomato. But that doesn't grow here, and as far as I know it only grows in Ecuador.

The next plate that came out was an enormous platter with enough steak to feed four grown men, which it did. Everyone got a fair share as they put a different kind of each on my plate and explained what it was, as well as where on the cow it came from. They all definitely had different tastes, that's for sure. But I just don't know how to explain it. There's a clear difference between ground beef and Filet Mignon, but with these different cuts, I couldn't say which was better or what the taste was. One of the other guys was able to clearly distinguish and name every cut of steak.

On top of all the steak, we also had two plates of steak fries. I don't know why, but for some reason fries just taste better as steak fries. They go together so well. Once the food was finished we had espresso to wake us up--full bellies of steak make you sleepy and are not conducive of going back to work. A coworker paid for all of us and I thanked him graciously as we stepped into the drizzle and back to the office, where we joked around and eased into the weekend.

A Send Off For a Friend

Today is Kristine's last day here in Argentina. Tomorrow she will fly away to Quito via Panama, but you can't really count that as a day since she's going to the airport early in the morning. We've pretty much covered all of the bases here in Buenos Aires, mostly because so many museums are closed either for repairs or due to Swine Flu. Yet we still have some things to do.

She was going to surprise me with a gift, but she wanted to know what kind of Mate gourd I would like, so now we have to go in search of one. Mate is the typical tea everyone drinks here, and though it's bitter and hot the first few tries, eventually you get used to it. I was planning on buying my own eventually, but Kristine insists on getting me something. We walked around a while yesterday trying to find the right one, but all we found were touristy ones with intricate designs, and I just want a regular one that locals have.

After talking to some people we were advised to go to Once, the neighborhood that my mother once lived in, to find a regular Mate gourd. So this morning we will head to Once and try our luck. After that we'll come back to my apartment so she can pick up the rest of her luggage, drop that off at her hostel, and then get some work done. By work done, I mean Kristine will go to a beauty salon for an hour or so and I'll get a 5 minute hair cut, then sit around.

Other plans for the day include meeting up with her boyfriends' sister, who lives in Buenos Aires, to bring some things back to Ecuador with her. We also want to try eating at a restaurant called Siga La Vaca, which is an all you can eat steak house where they also serve you a liter of wine, beer, or soda. It might be a little expensive by our standards here, but after all, you get all you can eat Argentinian steak and wine. Not too bad.

Three things we had planned on doing constantly on this trip were eating steak, drinking wine, and watching or dancing Tango. The first two were done very well, but we never found a Tango show. Kristine's hostel actually gives free lessons on Thursdays, so we're going to participate in that tonight, then head out with the hostel group to a Milonga, a place where you can see a Tango show and then dance too. So without trying to get all of the last sites crammed in, we're simply going to have a nice little day together and then go our separate ways. I'm going to be sad to see her go.