Tour: Meat is on the brain

Winston Aldworth is the Herald’s Travel Editor. In the Argentinian capital, he finds that meat and mating are on the brain.

In the toilet of every restaurant in Buenos Aires is a condom machine. And on the tables of every restaurant in Buenos Aires is a steak. A massive steak, the bigger ones are the size of a fairly big bloke’s forearm. The smaller ones, merely bigger than pretty much any steak you’d be served in Auckland.

So, here we are in Buenos Aires, eating more steak in one sitting than you’d ever test your colon with at home. At every table, giant hunks of dead cow are walloped on to place settings. Near the doorway of Floreria Atlantico, two attractive young women share a T-bone that wouldn’t have looked out of place on the set of The Flintstones.

Over a lunchtime cross-cut rib at the excellent La Cabrera, a middle-aged couple snog like teenagers in the back row of the movie theatre. I can understand their enthusiasm; the cross-cut rib is sensational. (We saw a lot of PDA snogging in Buenos Aires – from airport queues to cafe tables, everywhere. More than I can recall in any other city.)

A week-long gastronomic tour of Buenos Aires would be akin to burying yourself in a cow and eating your way out – only through the best cuts, naturally.

Of all the world’s eateries, a steak restaurant with intestines on the menu is the most redolent of death. And, after all that, when you go to the toilet, you’re confronted with a condom machine.

I’ve just eaten half a cow, and they think I’m going to have sex?

At lunch in a friendly local bistro, we spot an “Erotique salad” on the menu, tucked in alongside delicious, beef-filled empanadas – it’s really just a Waldorf with maraschino cherries, but c’mon, can’t you people go five minutes without thinking about sex?