Eating Out

We have now dined out twice and both experiences were very good.  I've been looking at restaurant reviews on Trip Advisor as well as some other places on the Internet -  looking for information on good food - not fancy and not expensive and where the locals go.  We're starting out with ones in Recoleta.  Then we locate them on Google Maps and head out on foot.

Yesterday (Friday) we walked about 1 km to Cumana - a neighborhood Argentine restaurant.  It was a little before 3:00 p.m. and yet was still quite busy.  The tables were covered with white paper - with a little bag of crayons in case you wanted to doodle while you waited for your food.  A friendly young waiter quickly brought us menus which we studied -many things we've never had before so it took some time to make decisions.  However, they had a nice listing of pizzas in chica and grande.  We decided to start out with an empanada - a widely sold and eaten meat pie shaped like a half-moon, sometimes baked and sometimes fried.  John had lomo and I had pollo.  They were about $1US each - nice little appetizer. We cut them in half so that we could taste both of them and they were delicious - baked, not fried.  For the main course, John ordered a lentil cazuela - it's kind of a stew - they had many different types to choose from.  I decided on a mushroom pizza (which turned out to also have delicious green whole olives scattered about).  Everything was piping hot - the pizza straight out of the adobe oven - nice thin crust and delicious ingredients.  However, chica was not so chica and I could only eat half of it so we had half to take home.  John thought his cazuela was excellent.  We ordered the common Argentine beer - Quilmes - which is about like Mexican beer and very refreshing in this warm and humid weather.  It comes in large bottles - 750 m. or 1 liter so we shared a 750.  The total bill was less than $20 US.  (96 Argentine pesos).

The tables are quite close together and another couple sat down next to us after we had ordered.  We had a nice chat with them.  They had been in BA for 4 weeks and were leaving for other parts of Argentina the next day.  They were retired French Canadians from Montreal but spoke fairly good English with us.  They gave us some tips about traveling around town on the elaborate bus system.

We left the restaurant quite stuffed and were glad to have the walk back home happily carrying our leftover pizza. We will definitely go back another day to try a few more of the interesting items on their menu.

  Here's a link to the rest of Friday's pictures.

My next post will be about our Saturday outing and more food. (Good thing we are walking).