Argentinean Steak

I have been on the vegetarian diet for quiet some time - first in India and Asia because it was the safest bet to avoid food poisoning or basically nothing else was offered, then in Cusco because there was a general agreement that our cook should cook only vegetarian. All in all our cook did not too much enjoy the situation because she does not know how to cook veg food and I felt like being a rabbit...So the closer we were getting to Argentina the more I was convinced that we should be looking for the real Argentinian steak. For the time being even Rita converted to carnivorous practices.

We started already on the Brazilian side of the border of Iguazu falls where I proudly announced that this is already it - we have found the real steak. My bro and to my surprise Rita rejected my claims and said that this is still not it. I could understand Greg´s opinion but I felt kind of uneasy about my vegeterian wife´s claims about the steak. The blame went to the strawberry caipirinha which both of them were drinking while I was tasting the local beer. Perhaps something was wrong with it.

Further on my way to discover the real steak we moved to Argentina. After the Posadas (San Ignacio) where we did not find anything close to a steak we took another night this time across the northern Argentina to Salta - we ended up there on Sunday and Argentina is generally closed on Sundays. Except some restaurants it is hard to find anything open and the streets look like a giant vacuum cleaner from space sucked in all the people. Only stray dogs hang around.

Once we got there of course pretty quickly we got hungry - so in the evening we have found the most fancy restaurant from Lonely Planet. It took us quite some time to get there but the steak was FANTASTIC. I have never tasted something better. Around 6 cm high, and the size of almost three quarters of my head it tasted heavenly. Together with Argentinian wine and excellent service I did admit that the previous one was not so great. I have never eaten in my life such a big chunk of meat...I also finally learned how a real medium steak should look like...Everyone including Rita eat one of his own steaks...

The next day we went to a more local place again with great wines but our steaks did not match the ones from the previous day...feeling like pigs after almost a week of eating huge steaks at 11pm (since in Argentina the dinner is served starting at 10pm - before that most of the restaurants are not even open) we decided to move on.

This is more or less what we can say about Salta - the city as such is pretty lame but has very many beautiful places around it - we did not have that much time so we only know it from the stories of my brother. But all in all our one year trip is also a culinary trip - we have been eating everywhere whatever local thing there was to it (including marinated cows tongue in Buenos Aires) and sometimes it is better than travelling itself...especially that the food is really cheap in most of the places but still excellent.

So feeling like pigs we set off to Chile - into the middle of Atacama desert and Greg set off for excursions around Salta...this is where we split with him and Malgo...we are heading back to Cusco to our kids...