But after two years and lots and lots of steak-driven taxi adventures in Argentina’s capital, I unearthed a few beefless treasures, too.

If you’re living in or traveling to the Metropolis of Beef, there are actually quite a few non-bovine treats that are unique to Buenos Aires and totally worth tasting.

Here are my ten taxista-recommended favorites:

PORK
1. Lechón at Don Lechón: In Argentina, lechón, or suckling pig, is a dish usually reserved for holidays or special occasions. Expensive to buy and difficult to prepare, it plays a small but treasured role in the country’s meat ensemble. Tender at the bone, moist and cooked to perfection, the suckling pig at Don Lechón is worth a trip any day of the year. (Avenida Elcano 3607 (at Alvarez Thomas) – Colegiales – Tel. 4555-5846 – Map it)

2. Matambre at Parrilla Peña: I stumbled into this steak house in the middle of an Argentine beef shortage and discovered that they also make great matambre (pork flank steak), along with some of the best provoleta (grilled provolone cheese) and tiramisu in Buenos Aires. The owners are always around at this neighborhood parrilla – naturally it’s a great place to eat steak, too. (Rodríguez Pena 682, Tribunales, Tel: (11) 4371-5643 – Map it)

The crowd gathers at La Mezzetta

PIZZA & PASTA
3. Mozzarella pizza at Albamonte: This is not your traditional, thick-crust Argentine-style pizza. Locals, including taxista Antonio, love it anyway, thanks to wood oven-baked crust that manages to stay crispy beneath generous helpings of mozzarella and super-fresh tomato sauce. Go for dinner and go early – every day of the week, the place teems with families, friends, and pizza lovers in the know. (Corrientes 6735, Chacarita, Tel: (11) 4553-2400 – Map it)

4. Sorrentinos in scarparo sauce at Spiagge di Napoli: After 83 years in the old tango neighborhood of Boedo, it’s no surprise that the cooks at this no-frills cantina know how to handle their starches. This is one of the few places in Buenos Aires where you can get your pasta al dente – and taste big flavors in your sauce. If house-made fusilli with puttanesca are good, ham, cheese and basil sorrentinos with pesto-based scarparo sauce are even better. (Independencia 3527, Boedo, Tel: (11) 4931-4420 – Map it)

5. Moscato, mozzarella y fainá at El Cuartito: Like the people of Buenos Aires, the disparate flavors in this classic trio somehow come together and yield something luscious. Though virtually all of the city’s pizzerias offer it, few that can top the sweet-savory excess of El Cuartito’s moscato (sweet, amber-colored wine), mozzarella (pizza that stays crispy on the bottom and oozes cheese on top) and fainá (a thick tortilla made with chick pea flour and olive oil). They’ve been at it since 1934 – and their slogan might have something to do with their success: “Pizza takes time. Your palate will appreciate the wait.” (Talcahuano 937, Tribunales, Tel: (11) 4816-1758 – Map it)

Image courtesy weareneverfull.com

6. Fugazzetta at La Mezzetta: At La Mezzetta – unlike at many Buenos Aires pizzerias – the pizza does not sit in a glass case waiting to be reheated. They serve everything fresh from the oven – screaming hot crust, bubbling cheese and all. Their fugazzetta – a tomato-sauce free, cheese and onion Buenos Aires specialty – easily outclassed every other version I tasted – the sugary crunch of the onions, the pungent oregano, and the endless river of cheese work together to create a focaccia-esque slice of sin. There’s usually a line at this modest storefront in Colegiales, but the aproned man at the cash register rips through it with an efficiency that would give Starbucks a run for its money. (Alvarez Thomas 1321, Colegiales, Tel: (11) 4554-7585 – Map it)

7. Vermicelli with Pippo’s tomato sauce at Pippo: If my grandma were Italian, this is the kind of comfort food she’d serve me: a big bowl of house-made, pencil-thick noodles smothered in a beefy tomato sauce and sprinkled with faux parmesan. Vermicelli, sauce and cheese become one as you work your way to the bottom of the bowl. You’ll be even happier when they bring the check. Try spending more than $10 here. Since it’s around the corner from the federal courthouse, there’s great people-watching, too. (Parana 356, Tribunales, Tel: (11) 4375-5887 – Map it)


EMPANADAS

Photo by Ryan Bird

8. Empanada de tambo at La Aguada: There’s a reason that La Aguada chef David Rosenthal’s empanada recipes have been repeatedly published in Clarín – they’re some of the best in Buenos Aires. The empanada de tambo, with seven cheeses (including Roquefort and mozzarella), fresh chives and celery is delicious (but so is his beef version with leeks and sweet peppers). In Rosenthal’s empanadas, the delicate, Tucuman-style masa stays where it belongs – in the background, quietly supporting the fillings that play the starring roles. (Billinghurst 1862, Palermo, Tel: (11) 4827-9477 – Map it)


SWEETS
9. Struffoli at Panaderia Santa Teresita: Struffoli are honey-covered, anise-flavored fritters that come from Naples and are usually eaten at Christmas time. At this grandma-owned and operated sweet shop in Las Cañitas, they fry them year-round. They’re so good they’ve saved the bakery from the gentrification that’s rocked the rest of the neighborhood. Although the alfajores here might also have a part to play in the bakery’s institutional status in the barrio. (Arevalo 2882, Las Cañitas, Tel: 4777-3740 – Map it)

10. Ristretto Granizado at Saverio: There is a lot of spectacular ice cream in Buenos Aires, especially a lot of spectacular dulce de leche ice cream. But I can’t shake the memory of this coffee and chocolate masterpiece from Saverio, a string of three ice cream parlors that’s been around for over 100 years. In ristretto granizado, coffee and dark chocolate dance between bitter and sweet. The purity of the espresso flavor is the main event. The chocolate is an embellishment. This is synergy you can literally have delivered. (Av. Cabildo 1501 (esquina Virrey Arredondo) – Belgrano, Tel: 0800-444-1909 – Map it. 2 other locations: www.saverio.com.ar)

Stay tuned for more Buenos Aires flashbacks: I’ll be breaking down my favorite cabbie-recommended steak houses next…

Such was my fate at Panadería Santa Teresita. I got there at quarter after two – 15 minutes into the bakery’s afternoon siesta. According to the handwritten sign on the door, they wouldn’t open again until 4:30.

Cursing myself for lingering too long over lunch at Las Cholas, I stood outside the bakery and contemplated my next move.

My thoughts wandered back to Pablo, the curly-haired taxista who’d brought me to the Las Cañitas neighborhood for lunch.

“That,” he said, pointing out the panadería as he aimed his taxi at jaywalking pedestrians who jumped out of his way, “is a wonderful bakery. Great pastries and cookies.”

This was the only hint of passion I’d witnessed from Pablo during our 10 minute drive.

Pablo had left his home in the province of Santa Fe thirty years ago and come to Buenos Aires, along with thousands of others, in search of work. He’d spent his first ten years in Las Cañitas – before the family-friendly slum became a hot spot for hip restaurants and night clubs.

Panadería Santa Teresita has been around since Pablo’s days in the neighborhood and has survived the gentrification of Las Cañitas. As has Las Cholas, the parilla where he dropped me off for lunch.

“When I lived in this neighborhood, I used to eat at Las Cholas,” he said, “The empanadas are good. Meat is good, too.”

I smiled my thanks and suppressed my urge to protest the idea of eating at yet another parilla. I was still a bit traumatized from last week’s close encounter with a chinchulin.

So I slid past the list of organ meats, classic cuts of bife, and milanesas on Las Cholas’s menu and zeroed in on the dishes cooked in the clay oven (Igloo-shaped, wood-burning clay ovens are a fixture at most countryside houses in Argentina, especially in the poverty-stricken northwestern provinces. Ignoring its peasant origins and recognizing its flavor-enhancing capabilities, more and more Buenos Aires restaurants are building clay ovens in their kitchens).

I’d been lucky to get a table at Las Cholas in the first place. At lunch time, the two-story, 200-seat restaurant was teeming with Argentines of every generation. Grandparents, parents, and kids from a nearby elementary school occupied most of the tables. Businessmen, couples, and twenty-somethings taking a break from shopping in Las Cañitas’s trendy stores filled the rest.

Children used crayons (in baskets on every table) to create masterpieces for their mothers on paper table cloths while they waited for their food.

Servers rushed to and fro, delivering wooden planks of sizzling beef and crocks of cazuela (stew/casserole) with unceremonious boredom.

The wooden floorboards under my wicker chair shook every time someone walked past my table.

Everyone struggled to make their voice heard over the collective roar in the dining room and the clanging pots in the open kitchen.

After ten minutes of trying to flag down my server, she finally acknowledged my wave and took my order. As my eyes followed her around the room, I realized that the Brazilian pop on the stereo was the only element that broke with the restaurant’s rustic-chic motif – antique soda bottles, vintage signs, and exposed pipes suggested they were going for a countryside cabin feeling.

Meanwhile, a busser brought me softball-sized roll on a wooden breadboard.

If you believe the adage that a restaurant’s bread foreshadows the quality of the rest of its food, then this roll was a promising omen: dense and soft inside with a crunchy, smoky clay oven-baked crust outside. A little olive oil, a little salt, and that roll was bliss.

The clay oven also worked its magic on the empanada de lomo that arrived next – thin, buttery masa encasing chunks of filet mignon, green onion, sweet peppers and spicy gravy that danced on the edge of being over salted.

Who would have guessed that that zoo of a restaurant could produce an empanada that rivalled the best of the best at La Cupertina and La Aguada?

The meal reached its natural climax when the server brought my butternut squash cazuela with corn and mozzarella. Screaming hot in a ceramic bowl, garnished with a spoonful of cream and a handful of flat leaf parsley, the cazuela exhaled a scent of caramelized honey.

Eating alone amidst the happy chaos at Las Cholas made me feel like the only kid on the playground without a playmate. But in the company of that cazuela – soothing, rich, sweet and subtle – there was no place I would’ve rather been. It steamed to the last bite.

Content and full of anticipation, I left Las Cholas and headed for Panadería Santa Teresita. Apparently, my culinary karma had run out, since it was closed.

I stood in front of the bakery and toyed with the idea of hanging around until they finished their siesta at 4:30. Pablo’s passion for this place had been so evident…

Right on cue, a delivery boy pulled up next to me on his moped, lifted a crate of eggs from a box mounted behind the seat, and rapped on the glass.

A frizzy-haired fifty-something with a no-nonsense frown pulled aside an orange curtain, peaked through the window, and opened the door a crack for the delivery boy. Either sensing my eagerness or wanting to get rid of me, she opened the door wider and let me in without a word.

I stepped behind the orange curtain into a paradise of pastry. Glass cases full of cookies, danishes, croissants, rolls, loaves of bread, cakes, tortes, tarts, pizza, and focaccia were – judging by the heat and the heady baking aromas coming from the back – all made in-house.

“Someone told me your bakery was very good,” I said to the two bespectacled grandmas behind the counter, “But I have no idea what to get. Can you recommend some things I could take home?”

Their initial annoyance morphed into a frenzy of suggestions.

“You have to try the struffoli!”

“Macaroons!”

“Churros!”

“The onion bread and the cheese sticks – we don’t always have these, honey.”

After filling a paper sack with four pesos worth of pastry, they bade me goodbye with smiles and invitations to return. I thanked the grandmas profusely and walked onto the siesta quiet street.

Though I was stuffed from Las Cholas, I couldn’t wait to get home before sampling the goodies. I pulled a struffole (honey-covered fritters beloved throughout Italy and originating in Naples) out of my sack.

The anise-flavored pastry, prepared by practiced hands, tasted like the Christmas treat that it was. The rest of the stuff was equally outstanding – especially the macaroon, light and richer than it was sweet. A fitting finale to a fabulous food afternoon.

Panadería Artesanal Santa Teresita (de Beatriz Burlato)
Arevalo 2882 (Las Cañitas) – Cuidad de Buenos Aires
Tel: 4777-3740
Hours: Mon-Sat – closed from 2 pm – 4:30 pm; closed Sunday.

Leer ‘Las Cholas & Panadería Santa Teresita’ en español en Guía Epicúreo