Argentines are really into enjoying their food…and snacks. Quite unlike Chile and Mexico, Argentina has cultivated a strong taste for sweet pastries and cakes (tortas), and these delights can be found almost anywhere you go. Cafes are everywhere. Dulce de leche, which is literally “sweet of milk” or “milk candy” in Spanish, is especially popular in Argentina. It is actually cooked condensed milk. They make cakes, cookies, pastries, desserts from this caramel-like syrup. In Chile, it’s called manjar (pronounced as ‘maan har’); in Peru, it’s called manjarblanco.

Having cake and tea in Buenos Aires

This yummy cake above that we had is called Porteño, a classic local cake made with thick meringue on top of a chocolate sponge base and a slab of dulce de leche in between the layers.

 

The naval building near our apartment

Well-dressed locals go for their shoe shine

Paraguay Street

The massive but empty Harrods Building (the famed British department store) was once the place for porteños to shop, but it has been sitting dark and abandoned on Florida Street for years. In 1997, the British court issued an injunction to restrain the Buenos Aires Harrods store from trading under the Harrods name since the store became independent of Harrods since the late 1940s.

 

You can find many newspaper/magazine kiosks along the streets. Our favorite daily paper is the Buenos Aires Herald, the only English newspaper here.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 27th, 2008 at 10:32 am and is filed under Argentina. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.