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Amerian Córdoba Park Hotel is centrally located in Córdoba city directly across the street from Patio Olmos Shopping Center on Av. San Juan. According to the website, the hotel is rated a 4-star superior quality hotel. From my travels I can’t say that this hotel was 4-stars but, I guess, for Argentina rating standards the Amerian Córdoba Park Hotel does fulfill the qualifications for that distinction.
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If you’ve watched any special on Buenos Aires on Travel Channel or Food Network, more or less there’ll be a reference to the popularity of ice cream. Now I could probably write about any ice cream shop in Buenos Aires but I wanted to focus on Grido, the ice cream shop I couldn’t stop seeing while visiting the city Córdoba.
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Alfonsina is a restaurant located near Patio Olmos shopping center in Córdoba. The restaurant is small, loud, and busy; filled with a mix of locals and tourists. The menu is simple with not much of a parrilla offering. Not knowing what Córdoba had to offer in terms of restaurants I was recommended this restaurant by the employee of one of the tour guide offices. I doubt he gets any kick-backs by recommending this restaurant but he did claim that it was one of his favorite places. Without many other options, I ate here and had a simple, quick meal.
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I’m the type that believes that some of the best food will come from either your hole-in-the-wall restaurants or better yet, street vendors. Now, the sanity issue is always a concern but when it comes to the street vendors you have true locals cooking good food while keeping it at a fair price since the overhead costs are minimal. As with the taco trucks I’m used to come the choripan carts of Argentina. Choripan simply is a chorizo sandwich. The chorizo is split down the middel the long way, placed in bread with chimichurri and other garnishes of your choice. If that sounds tasty to you, trust me, it is.
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La Rueda is a parrilla located in the central commercial area of Mar Del Plata. My experience with this restaurant was with doing take-out rather than sitting in and dining. I was actually very impressed with the whole operation of doing take-out orders. Even with the many people making orders I can confidently say that they didn’t screw-up my order and didn’t forget the chimichurri. I also thought that the prices were reasonable when opening up all the packages and seeing the amount of food that I’d received.
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El Palacio Del Bife is a parrilla located in the central area of Mar Del Plata. Being centrally located within Mar Del Plata amongst the hotels, this restaurant’s clientele is predominately tourists that spent a few too many hours in the sun during the day. The menu is standard with their choices as with any other parrilla. Personally, the portion of one steak is enough for two people but as evident by the couple over on the next table there are those who will each eat their own well-sized steak. I thought the service was a bit shotty as the normal attentiveness of these male career waiters wasn’t up to par with other parrillas.
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The Hotel Presidente is conveniently located in the Retiro neighborhood of Buenos Aires on Av. 9 de Julio within several blocks of the Obelisco. Under normal circumstance I won’t stay at a hotel in Buenos Aires because renting an apartment is such a big market that only the untrained tourist would pay for a hotel. In this case, I had an extra night in Buenos Aires and needed to find lodging. After walking up and down Av. 9 de Julio this was the only place that had a room; and just conviently it was their version of a suite; $180 USD per night. Now it was only for one night and I had no other options so sometimes you just gotta do it.
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Paladar is a upscale market in the Belgrano neighborhood of Buenos Aires specializing in meats and antipasto. Antipasto is your cured meats and cheeses that go well as a starter for a meal to wet your appetite. I make specific note of Paladar because I consider this place as the Lexus of meat markets because the place is not cheap by normal market standards but the quality is unmatched.
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Katmandu is an Indian restaurant located in the Palermo Viejo area of Buenos Aires. You’d be surprised but Katmandu serves up some pretty tasty authentic Indian dishes. The restaurant is not cheap by Argentinian standards but worth trying as an alternative to the parrillas and fancy fusion type restaurants. From the tandoori to the curries, the biryani and samosas; Katmandu has many choices that’ll satisfy anyone or just completely stuff a person beyond sufficiency.
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Los Porteños is a restaurant/bar located in the Recoleta neighborhood. I met up with a couple of friends to have pizza and beer after they’d gone to a concert over at the Buenos Aires Design. This was simple place that kept the beer flowing and didn’t mind our loud banter as we ended up staying there for hours without ever getting the notion from the restaurant employees that it’d be best that we leave.
