a vegan in buenos aires

Being vegan in a meaty city like Buenos Aires was no easy task. Most menus did not offer a single vegetarian option. Even salads were ham and cheese laden and soups were made with meat broth. So how did I avoid starvation in Buenos Aires? In a word....

Pasta. And lots of it. About 40% of Argentinians are of Italian desent, so they do pasta well. Al dente. Balanced sauces. Variety. As delicious as it was and as much as I adore pasta, though, eating some form of it once a day quickly got tiresome.


These homemade noqûis [gnocchi] in Uruguay, however, were a noteworthy highlight--fluffy as clouds and lightly coated with an authenic Ligurian cheeseless, nutless pesto.


We ate lunch at Bio, a charming vegetarian restaurant in the Viejo Palermo neighborhood of Buenos Aires. I had the seitan curry with coconut milk--a healthy, tasty reprieve after several consecutive pasta dishes.


Omniman had the tofu in a Dijon mustard sauce.


Cheeseless pizza, like this one I ordered at Filo, was an excellent option, especially when paired with some famous Argentine malbec.


We stopped for lunch one day at a neighborhood cafe and I almost wept tears of joy when I spotted "Soy Milanese" on the menu. It came with veggies of the day, one of which was *oops!* mashed potatoes with butter. [My pitiful Spanish really failed me here. I hate when this happens.]


Although Sinclair, a Spanish restuarant, did not offer a single vegetarian dish, the chef made me this intense, saffron-perfumed vegetarian paella. That's the nice thing about Argentina--most eateries are more than happy to appease you.

In summary, in Buenos Aires, you'll consume tons of delicious pasta, rice and bread. Your taste buds will definitely thank you, but your triglyceride levels will not.