Chile is a narrow strip of country, 2,600 miles long and about 250 miles across at its widest, between the lofty Andes and the blue, blue Pacific.

In many ways Uncle Willie and I were just like all the other tourists in Argentina. Always in a hurry, we saw too much, digested some of it, but left the real national mystery, the full flavor of Argentina, untouched by our swift passing....

“One cannot see a country,” Uncle Willie said, “by staying in its largest and most popular city. We must move on. Travel is broadening.”

Argentina rolls South along the long, lean east coast of South America, right down to the butter-horn A shape of the Tierra del Fuego, blue with fury and wind and ice.

The lackluster Valley of the Po is crowned with pinnacles of architecture and seraphic cooking.

On the occasion of Gourmet Live’s June 6, 2012, issue saluting Food Jobs, we are pleased to reprint this early article by the late, great dean of professional food criticism, Craig Claiborne. In The Man Who Changed the Way We Eat, a 2012 biography of Claiborne, author Thomas McNamee recounts how Gourmet’s Ann Seranne assigned him his first article for the magazine....