A Gringo in Buenos Aires » Food & Drink

Coffee in Buenos Aires: Is it Good or Bad?

Tim Gringo in BA — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 14:00:36 +0000

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.

Personally, I love the experience of going for a coffee in Buenos Aires, particularly if it’s at a Café Notable like El Federal in San Telmo. I love the vaulted ceilings; the fileteado artwork; the waiters in bowties; the gloriously beat-up furniture, and the checkerboard floors. It all makes for a perfect café environment. Order a single café con leche and suddenly (well, not that suddenly) your table is overflowing with stuff: the coffee; sugar cubes; a linen napkin; a shot of sparkling mineral water, and a little plate of alfajores to boot. Now that’s value! Plus you can linger over that one cup as long as you like and no-one will ever pester you to order more.

Ahhh J. It’s a very nice experience, one that I never tire of and always share with friends when they’re here on vacation.

So: thumbs up for the Buenos Aires coffee culture.

All of this leaves us with a puzzling question though. Given that Buenos Aires has such a great coffee culture, why is the coffee itself so bad? Because it really is terrible. Bitter, watery and awful, it’s actually worse than a decent cup of Nescafé.

In other countries, Starbucks is my fall-back, my go-to-guy for when I can’t find a decent independent café, or for when I want to be absolutely sure of being able to get Wi-Fi along with my caffeine. In Buenos Aires however, Starbucks provides some of the best coffee on offer.

The reason can’t be the equipment, because most cafés sport beautiful, top-notch espresso machines, and anyway, it’s not just the coffee that’s served in cafés: the ground stuff that you buy in supermarkets is horrible as well.

The biggest contributor to the awfulness of the coffee here is that, unlike anywhere else in the world, in Argentina coffee beans are roasted with sugar. Look at a pack of Argentine coffee in a store and you’ll see the word ‘torrado’ written somewhere on the label. This means ‘sugar roasted,’ a process which interferes with (and I think, ruins) the natural flavors of the bean.

Why are the beans roasted in this way? Apparently there are two reasons: 1) to disguise the bad quality of the beans, which in Argentina are low-grade beans from Brazil; and to cut the expensive coffee with something cheaper (the sugar can represent as much as 15-20% of the weight of the batch).

Clearly this is not a good situation for coffee lovers.

Is there light at the bottom of the coffee cup?

There are some signs on the horizon that things are changing in Buenos Aires with regard to coffee. The city is now home to some specialty coffee shops that really focus on blending and taste. The café chain Establecimiento General de Café (www.estcafe.com.ar), for example, has a great reputation.

Personally, I love Matilda’s, the tiny hole-in-the-wall café in San Telmo at Chile 673 (near Chacacubo) that serves great coffee AND delicious cupcakes.

If you don’t live near enough to somewhere like Matilda’s, you might have to resort to bringing in a 5kg bag of your favorite blend from overseas, buying a French press, and drinking your coffee at home. And if you’re at a Café Notable, order a nice glass of Malbec instead – now there’s something that Argentina does well!

Fernet in Buenos Aires: Incredibly Foul or a Tasty Delight?

Tim Gringo in BA — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 12:00:48 +0000

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.

So those are the ingredients, now what about the taste? Here’s a quote from SF Weekly, a free alternative weekly newspaper from San Francisco, California:

“If you can imagine getting punched squarely in the nose while sucking on a mentholated cough drop, you’ll have an idea of Fernet-Branca’s indelicate first impressions.”

I’d say that description is spot-on. The thing is, Fernet was created (in Italy) as a digestive to be taken after a meal. In other words, MEDICINE. And we all know that the worse medicine tastes, the better people will think it works. No surprise then, that the creators of Fernet emptied the contents of their spice rack into it.

Or as a friend once told me after tasting Fernet & Cola:

“I feel like I just drank tar off of a hospital floor while simultaneously having a Gorilla slap me across the face with a bottle of Bengay”

Really, Fernet + Coke is a prime example of what happens when people from one place (Italy in this case) move to another place a really long way away (Argentina). They bring their foods, drinks, traditions and so on along with them, but many of those things get mangled in the translation. It’s like people in Australia roasting a turkey for Christmas…in 95+ degree heat.

One thing I can GUARANTEE you is that if you ask an Argentine why they drink Fernet, there’s a 98% chance that they will tell you how healthy it is and how it doesn’t give you a hangover. Sorry, the main cause of a hangover is dehydration caused by alcohol. If you’re getting drunk then you’re getting a hangover, end of story. Anyway, what would Argentineans know about hangovers? They don’t even drink. Ask an Irish person, it’s much more their area of expertise.

Now. Having just ranted about Fernet for a good 400 words, I have an admission to make. I drink Fernet + Coke. If that comes as a surprise, don’t worry, it’s a pretty f-cking massive surprise to me too. So why do I do it? Well, in large part it’s because at the end of the night, there’s usually still Fernet + Coke left at the asado after all the beer, wine and vodka has been drunk, but I think there’s also a small part of me that actually enjoys the challenge of drinking something so foul. And you?

* To any Argentine readers out there, feel free to unleash hell in the comments.

Argentine Beer: Have a Pint or Three

Tim Gringo in BA — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 12:00:20 +0000

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.

Now, if you’re a member of this group and you find yourself living in Buenos Aires, then your needs are well catered for. Quilmes is an entirely reasonable lager, and if you get sick of it or want a slight taste variation, then just about every beer fridge and bar in Buenos Aires offers you a host of alternatives: Stella Artois; Isenbeck; Budweiser; Heineken; Schneider, and so on.

The second, smaller group of beer drinkers however are aficionados who DO drink it for the taste. Now, when you eat or drink something ‘for the taste,’ that almost always means that you want a lot of taste. And lagers (like those listed above) just don’t have it. If you need proof, point your browser at www.ratebeer.com, check out their Top 100 list for 2010, and count how many of them are lagers. Or don’t bother, because I’ve done it for you: there are none. Zero. Not one.

So if you’re a beer aficionado living in Buenos Aires, forget the beer fridge at your local chino or the tap beers at your local bar. But now what? Unfortunately, Argentina is just not built for beer lovers (maybe it’s because the wine is so good). While your transfer to Germany or Belgium comes through however, the decent selection of microbreweries in BA might just tide you over. Here are three of the best:

* Antares. Antares is a microbrewery with seven pubs in Argentina. The one you’re most likely to find convenient is their flagship pub at Armenia 1447 (between Cabrera y Gorriti) in Palermo. They do seven of their own beers and I personally am addicted to the Scotch. Antares beers are also on tap at the Gibraltar pub in San Telmo.

* Cossab. Another great option is Cossab’s ‘cervecería artesanal’ at Carlos Calvo 4199. The surroundings are pleasantly bohemian, they do six of their own beers (the Cossab India Pale Ale is the best), AND they have all-you-can-eat pizza on Wednesdays and Thursdays for 19 pesos per person. Like, what are you waiting for?

* Buller Brewing Company. The good folks at Buller Brewing Company obviously have your interests at heart, because they offer two locations (Roberto Ortiz 1827, Recoleta, and Paraguay 428, Microcentro) for your . It’s a little more expensive than the other two options here, but Buller’s beers are so good you’d swear they were German. In particular, don’t leave without trying the India Pale Ale and their honey beer.

So there you have it. Three excellent purveyors of microbrew and many locations for you to quaff them in. Go on, have another pint!

The 5 Best Parrillas in Buenos Aires

Tim Gringo in BA — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 21:38:13 +0000

Italy, France, India and Thailand are world famous for their cuisines, but Argentina is world famous for its buttery, tender, melt-in-your-mouth steak. And where does one find this food of the gods? Why at the barbecue grill restaurants known as parrillas, of course.

Now, trying to name ‘the 5 best’ parrillas in Buenos Aires is actually a little insane. There are hundreds if not thousands of parrillas in Buenos Aires, and very few of them (by your author’s humble estimations) aren’t at least ‘quite good.’ So: I’m not even going to try. Yes, that’s right; the heading of this article is a total lie!

Instead of trying to nail the 5 best parrillas in Buenos Aires, the following list offers you some parrilla options that you might not have considered before. No La Cabreras or El Desnivels here. However, every parrilla listed here has a legion of devoted fans, and each of them would make a fine choice for your next meat feast fiesta. Enjoy.

Siga La Vaca (Alicia Moreau de Justo 1714, Puerto Madero)

This Puerto Madero institution is a tenedor libre, otherwise known as an ‘all-you-can-eat buffet,’ which makes it a nice option if you have visitors in town who want to sample a little bit of everything. Bife de chorizo, vacío, chicken, chorizo, bondiola, Patagonian lamb – it’s all here. There’s also an expansive salad bar and dessert options. The only problem with Siga La Vaca (‘follow the cow’) is that the lines can become very long after 9pm, so if you go, you might want to go a little earlier than usual.

La Rosalía (Scalabrini Ortiz 1538)

This parrilla, really more of a street café with meat than a restaurant, gets mobbed daily by its hundreds of loyal customers. Many of them sit at the tables inside, but many more just line up at the street-facing grill for a takeaway choripan or vaciopan. It’s people-friendly rather than tourist-friendly (an important distinction), cheap and delicious.

Don Julio (Guatemala 4691 and Gurruchaga, Palermo Soho)

Can you say ‘old-school’? Don Julio brings you the traditional parrilla experience that you probably imagined getting before you came to Buenos Aires: brown leather-topped wooden tables; ancient tiled floors; warm service; excellent meat, and all at a reasonable price. The cuadril (rump steak) is a particular specialty, so this is a good place to try it if you haven’t already.

El Trapiche (Paraguay 5099, Palermo Viejo)

Why choose El Trapiche? Well first off, it’s clean, well-lit and is packed with helpful waiters who know the menu backwards. Which is good, because the menu is vast. It also has a long and well-priced wine list, an often-overlooked feature. The matambrito de cerdo (grilled pork flank) here is famous, so if you can bear to order a cut of meat that doesn’t come from a cow for once, you might just be very happy you did.

Rodi Bar (Vicente Lopez 1900 and Ayacucho, Recoleta)

Rodi Bar is located ‘in the heart of Recoleta’ (right near the cemetery), and it’s wildly popular, a real local favorite. It draws Argies and expats alike with its unique blend of grumpy waiters, paper-covered tables, great food and low, low prices. The desserts are unmissable, the wine is cheap, and if someone in your group is tired of meat (perish the thought!) they do some good fish and seafood dishes along with the bife.

Send Love BA: Send a Personalized Care Package to Buenos Aires!

Tim Gringo in BA — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 12:00:39 +0000

This is a guest post by Madi Lang from Send Love BA

Peanut butter, brownies, carrot cake, banana bread, chocolate chip cookies, homemade chicken soup, muffins, cupcakes…. Drooling yet?

Bummer you can’t get them in Buenos Aires, right? Not anymore!

SendLoveBA.com is here to provide you with all of your homemade gringo favorites. The best part? You don’t have to pay a cent! Your parents can order you a care package online at SendLoveBA.com, customize it with you favorite flavors and have it delivered right to your door.

Being abroad can be tough for parents; they miss you and would love to send you some fresh baked goodies in the mail. If they have tried to ship something here to Buenos Aires it probably never arrived, or maybe you had to truck it to Ezeiza or Constitucion to pick it up with a hefty fee. Now, parents can save over $100 USD and not worry about the package arrive late…or never. SendLoveBA.com makes it safe and easy for them to gift you your favorite homemade treats, baked especially for you and tasting just home.

Whether you have a birthday coming up, are feeling homesick, have a cold, or are just craving something besides empanadas and pizza – let your parents know they can order you exactly what the doctor ordered and send them to http://www.sendloveba.com

Join SendLoveBA on facebook to find out about new products and contests!

Closed-Door Restaurants of Buenos Aires

Tim Gringo in BA — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 15:00:16 +0000

Closed-door restaurants, a.k.a. restaurantes a puertas cerradas, are big in Buenos Aires. Never heard of them? What closed-door restaurants do is to blur the line between restaurants and dinner parties. They often occur in what is actually the home of the chef, and so necessarily they’re limited to small number of diners. Menus usually change weekly or even daily according to the whims of the chef. They also almost never offer you a choice of dishes; you just get what the chef is cooking on the night you go, which is actually kind of liberating.

The result of all of this is something more intimate and social than a regular restaurant. Going to a closed-door restaurant usually involves meeting and chatting with the chef and the other guests, rather than just eating and dashing. There’s much more a feeling of a shared experience with your fellow diners. Also, the cuisine they offer is often a lot more creative and adventurous than your standard Buenos Aires restaurant fare (which makes a welcome change from meat-and-Malbec).

The most well-known closed-door restaurant in Buenos Aires is undeniably Casa Saltshaker, which is run by Dan Perlman, author of the influential Buenos Aires restaurant review site at www.saltshaker.net. Casa Saltshaker offers a five-course tasting menu (optionally paired with wine) which changes from one day to the next. Every menu at Casa Saltshaker is themed, and some of the themes are pretty whacky (check out the website). It seats just 12 people in the apartment of Mr. Perlman and his partner Henry Tapia. It’s located in Barrio Norte.

Much newer on the puerta cerrada scene is Casa Sunae. The food is ‘pan-Asian’ and both promises and delivers “fiery curries, fresh herbs and exotic spices.” If you’ve been in Buenos Aires for a while and are craving food with flavor, Casa Sunae might be just the thing. There’s a nice patio which is a perfect place to meet the other guests over a cocktail prior to dinner, and the service is also top-notch.

Casa Felix is another well-established closed-door restaurant. Rock star chef Diego Felix offers a five-course tasting menu for up to 12 people every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night for ARG$150. Guests get a free welcoming cocktail on arrival. Casa Felix operates out of a beautiful house in Chacarita near Colegiales. Unlike some (most?) closed-door restaurants, mingling between guests isn’t all that common. The food at Casa Felix is sublime and consequently it’s wildly popular, and maybe the best-reviewed closed-door restaurant in Buenos Aires.

Two other highly regarded closed-door restaurants here are La Concina Discreta, which is located in Villa Crespo and has the capacity to seat 18 diners, and Treintasillas (www.treintasillas.com), which is in Colegiales and is run by the talented and creative chef Ezequiel Gallardo.

If you want to check out the puerta cerrada experience, note that most of them only open for Friday and Saturday nights – obviously if you’re running a restaurant out of your home, you don’t really want to have guests every single night of the week. Bookings are also essential.

5 Foods You Might Miss in Buenos Aires and Where to Find Them!

Tim Gringo in BA — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 23:26:47 +0000

There’s no denying that food is central to our existence, and not just in the sense that you die if you don’t eat it! For many of us, eating great food, talking about food, and bragging to our friends about the amazing restaurant we just discovered forms a large part of our weekly activities. Expat life in general and Buenos Aires in particular can be problematic on this front, because it’s sometimes hard to get your favorite foods here. In fact it’s not unheard of for expats who move here expecting to stay a long time cutting their stay short because of ‘the food issue’ (granted, they’re usually vegetarians).

Without further ado, here are five foods that you might miss while you’re in Buenos Aires, along with some suggestions for how you can get what it is that you want.

#1: Ranch Dressing

For many people, including myself, Ranch Dressing is a religion. We put it on our pizza, salads, french fries, buffalo wings, you name it. You are either a “Ranch Guy/Gal” or you aren’t. Living in Buenos Aires is an obstacle to the worship of this divine product when you can’t find a sacred bottle of Ranch to dump on whatever food item you are currently eating.

While you are not going to find Ranch in any restaurants, it can be found in some of the larger chain super markets across the city. At one of them I found “Paul Newman’s” ranch dressing and I probably payed about 30 pesos for it or more. A general rule of thumb here is any type of food you miss from back home that you can’t find widely available, check out a large supermarket. You can usually find over priced imported foods that aren’t popular with locals, like the common favorite, peanut butter.

#2: Spicy food

For people from the United States, it’s Mexican food. For Australians, it’s South-East Asian food like Thai and Vietnamese. And for English people, it’s Indian.

For Mexican food in Buenos Aires you have a couple of options, but the well-known California Burrito Company (CBC) located at Godoy Cruz 1781 in Palermo is a good choice. CBC is basically a direct rip off of Chipotle even down to the company’s branding and marketing artwork and it is definitely not as tasty, but when you are craving some spicy Mexican food, it is a great option.

Another great Mexican food is La Fabrica Del Taco in Palermo Soho that provides an array of hot sauces to compliment your tacos. The hot ones are definitely hot, so give it a try.

South-east Asian restaurants are not unheard of in Buenos Aires, but they can be disappointing. Maybe that’s not surprising. Every Vietnamese dish, for example, has at least 487 ingredients (trust me; I made a Vietnamese-style salad once about four years ago), and some of them must be hard to get hold of here, half a world away. Luckily, your savior is at hand in the form of Gibraltar, the English style pub Perú 895 in San Telmo. Their Thai green curry is authentically flavored and HOT. And they have beer. Score!

Super-spicy Indian food was always going to be a problem in Buenos Aires due to the Argentine penchant for sweet and salty flavors as opposed to spicy/hot ones. Riding to the rescue however is The Bangalore Pub & Curry House at Humboldt 1416 in Palermo Hollywood. The food is good, maybe not great, but it’ll keep you going until you go somewhere with better Indian food (India, perhaps?). The other option is just to make your own Indian food at home using a jar of curry paste that you’ve smuggled through customs.

Another option is to head to Chinatown in Belgrano. Many stores there sell different imported hot sauces that you might know of from back home. These can provide a great spice to any homemade food you want to make.

#3: Bagels

Is it just a bun with a hole in the middle? No! Authentic bagels are of course boiled rather than baked, and particularly ex-New Yorkers can’t seem to go a day without one. The bagel-free zone that is Buenos Aires became such a problem that there’s now a business devoted entirely to providing expats with all the bagels they can eat, and by all accounts it’s doing well. They’re called El Bagelazo and they deliver bagelly goodness right to your door.

#4: Decent cheese

A French friend recently returned to Buenos Aires after a trip home to France with no less than five different cheeses in his suitcase. Yes, there’s a man who’s missing his cheese. Despite the fact that Argentina is among the top dairy-producing and consuming countries in the world, it’s annoyingly difficult to get a decent bit of fromage here. However, one option is Valenti, which is a premium cheese chain with stores at Feria de Belgrano on Juramento, in Patio Bullrich Mall, and at Soldado de la Independencia 1185. It’s not cheap, but their cheese is undeniably excellent.

#5: A really good baguette

The supermarkets and chinos in Buenos Aires certainly have what look like baguettes, but on closer examination (by eating them) they’re not even close. They’re sort of dry and flaky rather than crusty and fluffy like they should be, and they’re often tasteless as well. Bread. Such a simple pleasure, but annoying when you can’t get the good stuff. L’Epi Boulangerie at Roseti 1769 in Charcarita. It’s a French bakery (maybe the name gave it away), and not only do they have good baguettes, they also have pain au chocolat, and an excellent honey bread.

Empanadas in Buenos Aires…Try to Eat Only One!

Tim Gringo in BA — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 19:45:56 +0000

Empanadas are a funny thing. I had eaten my fair share of hand-holdable meat pies and pasties before setting foot on the southern part of this fair continent. So the first time someone explained them to me, my reaction was something like “so they’re essentially mincemeat in a bit of pastry…and that’s a national dish? Is this some kind of joke?”

But of course, it’s impossible to live or even travel in Argentina without resorting to the occasional four-or-five-empanada lunch, or two-or-three-empanada snack (not embracing them would seriously limit your convenience food options), and little by little I’ve developed such an affection for them that I can’t go more than two days without one. I’m a convert.

Let’s go back to the start though. What is an empanada?

Empanadas explained

Empanar is a verb meaning “to wrap in bread,” so empanada simply means “wrapped in bread.” The typical Argentine empanada is a pocket of dough (made from flour and lard) with a savory filling, usually including meat. They’re small – you can get through most of them in about 3-4 bites – but quite filling. They can be baked (al horno) or fried (frito). While it’s more common to encounter baked ones, which obviously are healthier, the fried ones are damn tasty (and the odd one won’t kill you!).

In terms of flavors, the common ones in Argentina are ground beef, spicy ground beef, ground chicken, ham and cheese, cheese and onion, tuna, creamed corn and spinach. (In Spanish that’s carne, carne picante, pollo, jamón y queso, queso y cebolla, atún, humita and espinaca.)

If you were wondering, empanadas are something that Argentina and many other countries in South America inherited from Spain and Portugal. In those countries an empanada is a larger pie that is cut into individual portions, but in Spain they also have empanadillas, and these are more like the South American version.

Where to get yours

So where should one buy these doughy little treats? Well first of all there are three chain empanada vendors that you might come across: El Noble Repulgue; Gourmet, and Solo Empanadas. Of those Noble is the best, but also the most expensive, and its empanadas are the smallest. Gourmet gets good reviews but not for its service. Solo Empanadas is the worst of the three – though cheap, its empanadas often have too much onion or are just too juicy.

In addition to the chains, there are of course a million and one independent empanada vendors across the city. One that attracts rave reviews is El Sanjuanino, located five minutes’ walk from Recoleta Cemetary at Posadas 1515, so that might be a good one to try if you’re looking for some that are a cut above the ordinary.

Really though, part of the fun of eating empanadas in Buenos Aires is just trying out random, hole-in-the-wall empanada places and hoping to strike it lucky with some really good ones. Or if you’re really lucky, what’s even better is having a friend or family member who’ll make them for you en casa – like all food, they taste best when they’re made with love!

Empanadas for Delivery in Buenos Aires – Order Online!

Tim Gringo in BA — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 19:29:25 +0000

One thing that could be difficult when you are in Buenos Aires is trying to get some food delivered to your home when your Spanish isn’t quite up to par yet. Its one thing to try and communicate with your limited Spanish face to face; its a whole other animal trying to speak Spanish on the phone. All you want is a dozen Empanadas delivered to your door but you don’t understand anything the guy is saying on the other end of the phone!!

While the only way you are going to get better at your Spanish is to practice as much as you can and that includes speaking on the phone, some days it just isn’t in you. Thankfully, Empanadas companies like Gourmet have started to include online ordering on their websites.

While only available at a few select locations, online ordering is destined to be the norm at all of Gourmet’s locations. Give it a try!!

What is Everyone Drinking?! It’s Mate!

Tim Gringo in BA — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 19:46:26 +0000

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.

Five fast mate facts

1. ‘Mate’ is the name for both the beverage and the cup it is drunk from (but we’ll keep calling it a ‘mate cup’ for clarity), while ‘yerba mate’ is the name for the plant that the beverage is made from;

2. Native South American people were drinking mate long before the arrival of the Spanish, but the settlers quickly caught on, and it’s now the national drink of Argentina and also very popular in Uruguay, Paraguay and southern Brazil;

3. Argentina is the world’s biggest producer and also the world’s biggest exporter of mate, but domestic demand is so great that only 10-15% of what is produced is available for export;

4. Mate has a grassy, earthy, astringent taste that’s a bit like green tea…and not to everyone’s liking (if that includes you, try adding a little honey), and

5. Mate contains ‘mateine,’ which may or may not be just another name for caffeine , but in any case studies show that drinking mate relaxes the muscles while simultaneously stimulating the heart.

The essentials of drinking mate

To drink mate you need four things: yerba mate; a mate cup; a bombilla, and hot water. Yerba mate is what mate is made from. To prepare it, smaller branches are cut from the yerba mate plant trees and then toasted, dried, packaged and aged for between 6 to 18 months. It can be bought juuust about anywhere in Argentina, from the smallest chino (local supermarket) to the largest Jumbo or Coto, and you normally have the choice of many different sizes of bags. The traditional (and still most popular) mate cups are from a calabash vine gourd. However, wood, metal and even cow horn cups are also used. Some people say that one type is better than another, but it really just comes down to personal preference.

A bombilla is a metal straw. It has fine holes on one end so that you don’t get a mouthful of yerba mate particles when you suck on it (this is also a matter of technique – see below). The other end has a gold-colored spout which stays cool enough to touch with your lips.

As for the hot water, that comes from a kettle just like everywhere else! However note that the water must be at a temperature of 70 to 80°, never boiling or the mate will be bitter. It’s not uncommon to find free hot water machines for mate in Argentina in places like service stations and university campuses.

How to make mate

Mate is prepared by filling a mate cup with yerba mate, adding hot water, and drinking the infused water through the bombilla. That’s the process, but what this leaves out is the social ritual that goes along with drinking mate in the company of others.

When drunk in company, one person (the cebador) is in charge of preparing the mate. They make a cupful and take the first drink, as it’s during the first cupful when tiny particles of yerba mate are most likely to pass through the holes on the bombilla and end up in the drinker’s mouth. When they finish they refill the cup with water and pass it to the person next to them person, who drinks the entire cup before handing it back. The cebador refills the cup with water and passes it to the next person, and so on. It normally takes about ten refills before the yerba mate needs to be replaced.

Finalmente

Mate really is an obsession in Argentina. According to one study, 92% of households consume it – that’s pretty much everyone. Make no mistake, if you really want to integrate in Argentina, drinking mate and knowing the customs that surround it are a must. And hey, it’s a lot cheaper than Starbucks!

Next Step: If you are living in the US, it might be hard to find some Mate. Don´t worry, you can always order it off the internet from a place like Teavana.