What do people eat in Argentina?
Argentinians start light with coffee and medialunas, eat lunch around 13:00, have a merienda with mate at about 17:00 and sit down to dinner at 21:00 or later. Grilled beef, empanadas, pasta and dulce de leche run through all of it.
Typical dishes and their calories
Breakfast
Breakfast is small: café con leche or mate with two or three medialunas, the sweet little croissants of Argentina, or toast with butter and dulce de leche. Most people eat it quickly at home or standing at a café counter before work.
Lunch
Lunch is around 13:00. On a workday that means a milanesa, a breaded and fried beef cutlet, with salad, a few empanadas or sandwiches de miga, thin crustless sandwiches with ham and cheese. On Sunday lunch is the big family meal, often an asado or a long table of pasta.
Dinner
Dinner rarely starts before 21:00, and on weekends 22:00 is normal. It is the main meal of the day: a bife de chorizo, a sirloin steak of around 460 kcal, pasta, milanesa or pizza. To bridge the long gap, people have merienda at about 17:00, mate or coffee with something sweet.
Starters
At an asado the first things off the grill are chorizo, morcilla (blood sausage) and provoleta, a thick slice of provolone grilled until it melts, with oregano and chili flakes. Before dinner many share a picada, a board of cheese, salami and olives, or a plate of empanadas at about 300 kcal each.
Desserts
Dulce de leche, milk slowly cooked with sugar, goes into almost everything. Flan comes with a spoon of it, crepes called panqueques are rolled around it, and alfajores, two soft biscuits stuck together with it, are sold in every kiosk. Ice cream is ordered by weight, a quarter kilo or a kilo, often delivered at night.
Drinks
Mate is everywhere: dried yerba mate leaves in a gourd, topped up with hot water and sipped through a metal straw called a bombilla, passed around the group. With food people drink Malbec, about 125 kcal a glass, or Quilmes beer, and at parties fernet con coca, Italian bitters with cola.
Street food
Choripán, a grilled chorizo in a split roll with chimichurri, is the food of football grounds and the riverside stalls of Buenos Aires. Pizza is often eaten standing at the counter, a thick slice with fainá, a thin chickpea flatbread, laid on top. Empanadas are bought by the dozen for parties and late nights.
Normal there, odd elsewhere
On the 29th of each month many families eat ñoquis, gnocchi, with a banknote under the plate for luck in the month ahead. Mate is shared from one gourd and one straw, and saying gracias when it is handed back to you means you have had enough. Dinner at 22:00 with children at the table is completely normal.