A quarter century of almost continuous contact with Argentina stirs powerful memories: the return of Juan Perón with the embalmed corpse of the divine Evita; the magical pirouettes of Diego Maradona on the soccer field; wild nights of tango in clubs where crooners and dancers performed until dawn. But my most meaningful impressions of Argentina are nourished by beef. Red meat has given me as much insight into this country as any charismatic politician, sports star, or entertainer.
A few days after arriving in Buenos Aires for the first time, as a young foreign correspondent, I stopped at a construction site near my downtown office. I was drawn by the rich fumes of a lunch-break barbecue. A laborer was grilling a thick steak on a wire mesh stretched over the top of a large can filled with charcoal embers. Noticing my curiosity, he waved me over for a closer look. The meat was nearing a juicy medium-rare. Suddenly he began slicing off the less desirable bits, giving the meat the unmistakable tapered shape of Argentina. “There goes Chile,” he said, cutting away a long strip of fat. “Adiós, Uruguay,” he muttered, carving off a knob of gristle on the other side of the beef.
Not long after that day, I was invited to an estancia, one of the extravagant ranches that breed much of the country’s cattle, possibly including the specimen that had provided the steak for my construction-worker acquaintance. The estanciero, or rancher, and a few of his gauchos, as cowboys here are called, rode with me around the vast estate, located in the pampa, the legendary Argentine grasslands, where steers graze across an endlessly flat horizon in a 350-mile arc around Buenos Aires. There are no feedlots or hormonal enhancements in this country, the rancher told me, and beef makes it to market within 36 hours of slaughter. This, he said, accounts for the chewiness that puts off some Americans. (Argentines, on the other hand, complain that the aged beef so prized in the United States and Europe leaves an aftertaste of decay.)
The mock-Tudor ranch house rose behind a copse of trees. In the living room, between portraits of the rancher’s notable ancestors, were paintings of the family’s prizewinning bulls. I joked that the animals had been given equal billing, and the estanciero replied, “Why not? They have a more impressive pedigree than I do.”
In Argentina, beef is inseparable from culture in its broadest sense. Beef is nationalism: Argentines take it for granted that the rest of humanity accepts their claim to producing the best beef in the world. Beef is politics: The Peróns made sure that beef was cheaper than any other meat; even today, to allow steak prices to surpass those of lamb, pork, chicken, or fish is a sure recipe for popular unrest. Beef is also cachet: To own an estancia and raise prizewinning bulls can vault the newly prosperous into the highest social circles. Beef is even sensual: To compliment a well-shaped human torso, male or -female, Argentines are apt to remark, “Que buen lomo!”—“What a hunk of sirloin!”
To feast again on Argentina’s culture of beef, I time my most recent visit to coincide with the annual Rural Society Fair, or La Rural. Since 1886, the finest livestock in the country have been put on display here to be judged against the best of their breeds. Staged at the height of the Southern Hemisphere’s winter—during three weeks straddling July and August—La Rural sprawls over a 50-square-block enclosure in Palermo, the poshest district in Buenos Aires. This is the neighborhood where many estancieros have long chosen to make their urban homes away from their country estates. Their limestone apartment towers, with oak door entrances and brass lion’s-head knockers, offer spectacular views of the broad, coffee-colored Río de la Plata. Nearby, in leafy parks that have nothing to envy from Paris’s Bois de Boulogne, white-aproned nannies chase after toddlers. And within blocks of La Rural are the Palermo polo field and the municipal horseracing track, the settings for two other traditional estanciero pastimes.
Even though estancieros staff La Rural, own the animals, and provide the social luster, they account for only a fraction of the audience. This year I’m one of more than a million visitors—mostly middle-class and blue-collar families, students, and pensioners. They come to view the thousands of farm animals on exhibit, to watch the colorful parades of gauchos and army cavalry, maybe even to listen to the politicians extol the virtues of estancias. But most of them are here to eat beef. At La Rural, the meat is high quality, abundant, and reasonably priced.
By mid-morning, the wood-ember and charcoal grills of the cheaper meat stands glow bright, and the rich smoke of T-bones, filets mignons, sausages, and offal of various sorts wafts across the vast grounds, arousing my appetite hours before lunch. Wandering through the fair’s older pavilions, dating back a century and built in neoclassic style with Victorian statues on their roofs, I notice that since my last visit, there are also newer glass-and-concrete pavilions. They’re not as architecturally appealing as the old structures, but their superb ventilation systems have banished the barnyard smells of a previous era.
After three hours of contemplating beef, I can hold out no longer. Deciding among the restaurants at La Rural (they operate only during the weeks of the fair) isn’t easy, but I stop at the Hereford, which specializes in cuts from that breed. I order a dish that exists only in Argentina—asado con cuero, meat baked for hours with its hide still on, then served cold with an herby, garlicky chimichurri sauce. Nursing what remains of my half bottle of Hereford (yes, even some of the wines in this country have beef-themed names), I look out on prize cattle, just 20 feet away. The bulls and cows, each one in its own stall, are treated by their gaucho attendants like beauty contestants. I watch as one has its hide massaged and shampooed, another’s tail is frizzed into a pom-pom, and a third has its hooves polished to a shine. Each of their backs is draped with a fine wool cape. The gauchos are just as resplendent, with bright berets or felt hats, frilly shirts, broad belts laden with silver, and billowing pantaloons tucked into the accordion folds of their black boots.
I follow a file of Shorthorns and Aberdeen Anguses led by their gauchos into the outdoor arena where the competition is in progress. Dressed in tweed coats and caps, the Argentine judges have the look of English country squires. The main judge today, though, is a towering Canadian made even taller by his outsize cowboy hat. (Local judges are bound to have friends or relatives among the livestock owners and perhaps display an unintended bias—thus the foreign arbiters.)
The near stands, the equivalent of box seats, are crowded with men in green loden overcoats and women swathed in furs. The most serious spectators are keeping score sheets—to remind themselves which animals they might wish to purchase later on. I find a seat several rows back and strike up a conversation with my neighbors—the manager of a Patagonian estancia and his friend, a Wyoming rancher wearing a Stetson. The Wyoming man, William (“Just call me Bill”) Bunce, director of agribusiness for his state, tells me he’s a frequent visitor to La Rural.
“Basically,” he explains, “the judges want balance and proportion in an animal. They look at the depth of the rib and the sturdiness of the body.” Bunce continues his commentary throughout the contest, stroking his walrus mustache as he fills in his score sheet. “They look at the structural soundness of the legs and feet and see if they carry the animal gracefully. And they look at the top-line level—they want that back pretty straight.”
Whenever a winning animal is announced, a roar of approval erupts in the stands. At one point, an older gaucho attendant, holding on to his champion bull’s harness, covers his eyes to hide tears of joy. Later, a victorious younger gaucho pumps his fist in the air.
I ask Bunce how La Rural compares to the livestock fair in Fort Worth, among the most important in the States. “You don’t draw these kinds of crowds there,” he says, “and you don’t get the high society you see here.”
I know what he means. The following day, I return to La Rural to eat at the fair’s most sumptuous restaurant, the Salon Central, with a high-society estanciero couple, Santiago Zuberbühler and his wife, Chita Mendez. Their estancia, Acelain (pronounced “ah-se-lah-een”), is arguably the finest in the country. Two hundred and fifty miles south of Buenos Aires, it was founded by Zuberbühler’s grandfather Enrique Larreta, in the early years of this century, when “rich as an Argentine” was a phrase that echoed in London, Paris, and New York.
Larreta, a lover of Andalucía, built the Acelain estancia house in Mozarabic style, blending touches of Granada’s Alhambra Palace with the fortress architecture of medieval Spain. And while all the great estancias are known for their parks, I’ve never come across any that exceed the beauty of Acelain’s.
As our meat arrives, Zuberbühler, a lean, agile man in his early 70s, tells me about the auctions of pedigree Aberdeen Anguses that were held at Acelain when he was a child. “After the auctions, our gauchos would put on displays of horsemanship and then 100 people or more would sit down on bales of hay and eat huge portions of meat grilled over open pits.”
“Back then,” says Mendez, “there were wealthy estancieros who spent most of their time in Paris but always made sure to be in Buenos Aires for La Rural.” In those days, this same Salon Central, with its chandeliers, velvet curtains, and gilt-framed paintings, was the setting for dinner parties and dances to celebrate the winners at La Rural and their eligible daughters.
“If you look at many of the estancieros who win prizes today, they aren’t the old family names,” Zuberbühler says. The social aspects of participating in La Rural are important to newcomers, he adds, but they take the breeding of champions just as seriously as the old families. When I scan the list of winners, I see that their names—Garciararena, Catto, Werthein, Sinclair, Blaquier—echo the ethnic mix of Spanish, Italian, British, Eastern European, and French that characterizes this country of constant immigration.
Over the years, I’ve often heard Argentines brag that their palates are so sensitive to beef they can distinguish the differences among the meat of the various breeds. Claudio Codina, owner with his grandfather of La Raya, perhaps Argentina’s finest restaurant, claims to have just such a discerning palate. Charolais, the big, white French breed, he tells me as we walk through La Rural on the last day of the fair, has a sweet-flavored, chewy meat. The humpbacked Brahmin varieties, on the other hand, have a lean, smooth meat almost devoid of the marbling that makes the best beef so flavorful. But, Codina concedes, “I certainly can’t tell the difference between the British breeds—Hereford, Shorthorn, Aberdeen Angus.” Those are the breeds Codina serves at La Raya. He shrugs: “Customers seem to like them best.”
La Raya is known for its customized portions, prepared according to instructions that the guests write down and then hand to the waiters. The restaurant is also known for its meat: Each of its cuts comes from a different butcher. “We don’t expect one steer to be able to provide the best steaks and ribs and entrails,” Codina says.
La Raya existed for more than a half century in an outlying district, but in 1995 it moved to the Palermo neighborhood, where many of its patrons reside. Its client list reads like a Who’s Who of Argentina: tango and film personalities, famous athletes, politicians, and business magnates. In addition to the food, the in-crowd appreciates that the tables are set widely apart and that a wall of mirrors allows them to glimpse other celebrities without having to crane their necks.
I settle in with some friends at Codina’s table on a Saturday night at the end of my trip, and a meat feast appears: first, riñones (grilled kidneys) and molleja (sweetbreads), served in delicate slivers; next, veal and lamb chinchulines (intestines) with the consistency of al dente pasta. Then the main courses arrive. My entraña, from the diaphragm of a steer, has a rich taste that seems a hybrid of offal and steak. We share the asado de tira (short rib) and bife de chorizo (shell steak), which has been called Argentina’s unofficial national dish. Of course, there are the requisite green salads and fried potatoes. The wine is a stellar Argentine syrah.
At the table, which grows more crowded as friends of Codina stop by, we share tales of asados—barbecues—and unrequited loves. As the night winds down, I ask why asados always seem to be run by male cooks. A debate ensues. The men come up with explanations based on everything from testosterone levels and machismo to the supposed stoicism required to put up with the smoke. But it’s the women who make the most convincing argument: This is the one meal simple enough to entrust to men with otherwise suspect cooking skills.
This remark leads one of the guests, Dr. Roberto “Cacho” Paladino, physician to renowned soccer players and boxers, to begin rambling about one or another of his psychological theories. Before he can get too far, though, I point out that sitting across from him are two of the country’s leading experts on psychology. Momentarily embarrassed, Paladino turns to Codina, our host, and berates him for not having let him know beforehand who his audience would be.
“Me mandas crudo!” says the doctor, adding yet another entry to my growing lexicon of Argentine beef culture: “You serve me up rare!”