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.