What to Eat in Buenos Aires: Asado, Empanadas, Medialunas and the Rest
Buenos Aires has a food reputation built almost entirely around one thing — the steak — and while that reputation is deserved, it's also incomplete. The city's food culture is a product of mass European immigration (primarily Italian and Spanish, with significant waves from Eastern Europe and the Levant) layered over indigenous culinary traditions, shaped by a climate that grows exceptional beef, grain, and wine within a few hundred kilometers in every direction. The result is a city that eats extraordinarily well across price points, and where the most interesting meals are often not the most expensive ones.
Asado: What It Actually Is
Asado is not just a grilling technique — it's a social ritual. A proper asado takes hours, involves most cuts of the animal (not just the premium ones), and is presided over by the asador, who is responsible for the fire, the timing, and the sequence of service. It's done on a parrilla (grill), usually with wood or charcoal, and the low, slow heat produces a result that high-heat grilling cannot replicate.
The cuts to know: vacío (flank) is the most distinctively Argentine — long, fatty, intensely flavored, nothing like a European butcher cut. Tira de asado (short ribs, cut horizontally across the bones) is sold by the kilo and eaten with your hands. Entraña (skirt steak) is lean and quick-cooking, often the first thing off the grill. Mollejas (sweetbreads) are obligatory for anyone who isn't squeamish — crispy on the outside, creamy inside, better than anything else on the grill if you let them go long enough.
For a meal at a parrilla without a reservation: La Brigada in San Telmo, El Preferido de Palermo in Palermo, La Cabrera (expensive but exceptional, reserve online), Don Julio (the most famous, also Palermo, also needs a reservation weeks in advance in high season). For a cheaper and less scenographic experience: any neighborhood parrilla that doesn't have a menu in English or photos outside will do the job at half the price.
Empanadas: A Study in Regional Variation
Empanadas in Buenos Aires are porteña style: baked, sealed with a repulgue (twisted edge), typically filled with ground beef, hard-boiled egg, and olives (the classic), or with chicken, ham and cheese, or spinach and ricotta. They cost about ARS 400–700 each depending on the establishment.
What most visitors don't know: the empanadas in Buenos Aires are not the best empanadas in Argentina. The tucumanas from Tucumán province (small, fried, filled with slow-cooked beef) are in a different category. La Cocina on Pueyrredón in Recoleta imports the Tucumán variety and is the right place to do the comparison.
The Medialuna Breakfast
The medialuna is a butter croissant — flakier and sweeter than the French version, glazed with a light sugar syrup — and it is the correct breakfast in Buenos Aires. You eat them at a café con leche (espresso with steamed milk) with two or three medialunas, standing at the bar or sitting at a marble table, before 10am. The price at a neighborhood café is negligible.
The café culture in Buenos Aires is genuine and old — the city has historic cafés protected by law as "cafés notables" that cannot be converted to other uses. Café Tortoni on Avenida de Mayo (founded 1858) is the most famous and most touristic. Bar Notable El Federal in San Telmo and Las Violetas in Almagro are better for actually sitting and eating without a crowd.
Pizza Porteña: Its Own Thing
Buenos Aires pizza is thick, intensely cheesy (mozzarella piled on), and has almost nothing to do with Italian pizza beyond the name. It developed in the late 19th century from the Neapolitan immigrant community and evolved into something completely local. The standard order is a media masa (half dough, thicker) with two toppings, eaten standing at the counter with a glass of moscato or fainá (a thin chickpea flatbread served alongside).
El Cuartito near the Abasto neighborhood is the most famous and genuinely worth going. Güerrin on Corrientes is the 24-hour option — a Buenos Aires institution open since 1932, where you eat standing at the counter at any hour. Both charge prices that feel absurdly low by European standards.
Helado and the Italian Connection
Argentina makes some of the best ice cream in the world. This is a direct consequence of the Genoese immigration of the late 19th century — the techniques came with the immigrants and stayed. The texture is denser and creamier than most commercial ice cream, more like Italian gelato but with Argentine flavors (dulce de leche, maracuyá, banana split as a three-flavor combination that should be taken seriously).
Freddo and Cadore are the reliable chains — Cadore, on Corrientes, is the oldest gelatería in the city (founded 1957). Neighborhood heladerías in Palermo and Belgrano are often better than either.
The Caminito Food Connection
The food culture of La Boca — the neighborhood built by Genovese dock workers in the late 19th century — is inseparable from the Italian immigration story that gave Buenos Aires its pizza and its ice cream. Trevurs's free audio tour of Caminito and La Boca covers exactly this history: who came, why they painted their houses in the colors they did (ship paint, leftover from the port), and how a neighborhood of immigrants became one of the most photographed blocks in Latin America. Worth listening to before or after your first proper meal in the city.