"I think I just ate it's brain" - Millay

One of the Argentine specialities is their traditional Parrilla or steakhouse. The meat here is incredible, widely believed to be because of the grass fed free range cattle that Argentina produces, on average apparently Argentinians consume about 60KG of beef a year each! The meat is usually cooked over a huge barbecue in the corner of the restaurant leading to amazing smells and what looks like an entire herd smoking and sizzling away. Strangely there are no vegetables served with the meat apart from a bowl of french fries, this is for the meat purists only!

 

The traditional dish is to have a little bit of everything off the menu in what's called a parrillanda, we went out last night to sample one and poor little semi-vegetarian Millay ordered us the house special for two, mainly because it mentioned 'sweetbreads' which she thought sounded like bread dipped in sugar. Sadly here 'a little bit of everything' means exactly that in a country that considers every part of the animal fair game when it comes to eating. 'Sweetbreads' here is basically a nice way of saying pig's thymus gland. Along with these we were served Vacio (flank steak), tira de asado (narrow strip of rib roast), chorizo (spicy sausage), pollo (chicken), chinchulines (pig's small intestine), rinones (kidneys) and morcilla (blood sausage). As nice as some bits were, needless to say that we are now both sworn vegetarians for the rest of the week and are looking forward to the time when a barbecue just means some burnt hamburgers underneath a British raincloud!