Posted in Drink on 14. Sep, 2010
If you’ve ever been to San Telmo on a Sunday (and let’s face it, we all have), you would have seen market stalls selling antique seltzer siphon bottles. These beautiful old bottles display the history of Argentina’s love affair with seltzer.
And it’s a history that continues to be written. In Buenos Aires, bottles of seltzer in siphon bottles, now made from plastic, are still delivered to peoples’ doors, much like the way that milk used to be delivered in the United States and elsewhere.
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Posted in Drink on 31. Aug, 2010
In case you weren’t aware, coffee is quite popular nowadays! The internet tells me that over 400 billion cups are consumed every year worldwide – rather a lot by anyone’s reckoning.
Buenos Aires certainly contributes its fair share to that total. Indeed, at first glance, Buenos Aires seems to be the proud owner of a deep and abiding coffee culture: meeting for a coffee is indisputably a pillar of Argentine social life. This is aided and abetted by the fact that the lines between café, bar and restaurant are blessedly blurred in Argentina, meaning that you can get a cup of joe just about anywhere that has waiters.
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Posted in Drink on 09. Jun, 2010
If there’s one Argentinean custom that’s bound to give new arrivals in Buenos Aires a ‘wtf?’ moment, it’s the insane popularity of Fernet + Coke as the go-to mixed drink for any occasion.
More on that soon. But first, what is Fernet anyway? Here’s a description from our good friends at Wikipedia:
“Fernet is a type of amaro, a bitter, aromatic spirit. Fernet is made from a number of herbs and spices which vary according to the brand, but may include myrrh, rhubarb, chamomile, cardamom, aloe, and saffron, with a base of grape distilled spirits, and colored with caramel coloring.”
Now is it me, or is that ingredient list bizarre? If you’d always wondered what in the hell Joseph and Mary were going to use the ‘myrrh’ in ‘gold, frankincense and myrrh’ for, now you know. That just leaves frankincense, but you can probably put that in Fernet as well. It kind of seems like all bets are off. I mean, rhubarb? Come on, that’s just perverse.
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Posted in Drink on 08. Jun, 2010
The world of beer drinkers can be easily divided ‘in twain’ (which is just a fancy way of saying ‘in two,’ but I like to keep things interesting). In the first, much larger group, we have the people who like beer and drink it often, but don’t really do so for the taste. They’re happy to drink any beer that’s cheap, cold, refreshing, easily available, not horrible-tasting, and contains alcohol.
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Posted in Drink on 04. Feb, 2010
Everyone knows that Buenos Aires is a city of tango dancers, steak eaters and red wine drinkers, but its grand obsession with the infused drink ‘mate’ doesn’t rate much of a mention internationally. Many an expat fresh off the plane has been initially puzzled at the sight of so many people walking around with a thermos tucked under one arm, sucking on a metal pipe stuck into a gourd with a silver rim. ¡Qué raro!
Well you don’t have to be puzzled any longer. Echemos un vistazo (let’s take a quick look) at this dearly beloved drink.
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Posted in Drink on 01. Feb, 2010
Being a happy expat means focusing on the good things that your new home has to offer. For Argentina there’s a pretty well-defined and obvious list of ‘good things,’ and the price (cheap) and quality (excellent) of the wine gives it a prime position on that list.
First some fast facts. You probably already had some idea that Argentina was a big wine producer, but did you know that it’s the fifth-largest wine producer in the world? Or that it has lower average per-liter production costs than any other major wine producing country? Or that it’s one of only two countries (the other is Chile) that are currently exporting more and more wine to the United States with each passing year? Argentina is hot right now, and so is its wine, and thus there’s never been a better time to learn all about it.
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