Argentine Essentials --

Argentine cuisine highlights beef, wine, and mate.

The beef here is incredible. When I'm at home, I'll eat a steak once, maybe twice a year, and beyond that my diet pretty much consists of chicken and salmon. Here, the beef is too good, and too cheap to turn down. (More on that in my next post on restaurants!)

Argentina is the world's firth largest wine producer, and it's good. Even $2 wine is good. Which is worth considering when you are charged $4 for water at a restaurant...

Mate. It's everywhere. I mean EVERYWHERE. The drink is made from steeping yerba mate leaves in hot water. Mate is made in and consumed out of a hollowed-out gourd, accompanied by a metal bombilla (straw). It is a very social drink -- when visiting someone's home or office, they'll likely bring in mate and to share. On several occasions, I've gone in to meet someone for the first time, they pull out the hot water, and we pass the gourd back and forth, sipping the slightly bitter drink as we visit. I drink a lot of tea, so I've enjoyed it. Apparently the rest of the Argentine population does too. 

Mate gourds and bombillas at the San Telmo market

While it is a seemingly unportable beverage, I've learned not to underestimate these mate-drinkers. It is rather common to see Argentines walking down the street with a gourd in hand and a giant thermos of hot water under their arm. There is no lid on the gourd, the bombilla is less than secure inside the gourd, and who wants to carry around a thermos of hot water all day? The hard-core Argentines, of course!