I have never been to Argentina and I am not a meat-lover but this lovely essay makes me want to take the trip and definitely try the meat. Lot of useful tips for the would-be traveler, including this one about steering clear of the bread basket
With any order from the master menu comes the Bread Basket, which should be treated as you would treat a basket of wax fruit, that is, as a purely decorative ornament. It is considered bad form to actually eat anything from Bread Basket, as this will force the restaurant staff to send someone down into the bread cellar for a replacement roll before placing it on the next table.
In fact, you won't find good bread anywhere in Argentina. You can buy day-old baguette segments in a plastic sack, or else purchase the large sheets of white American-style bread used to make their triangular canapes (sandwiches de miga). The latter are actually punched out of the bread sheets like cookies from rolled dough - I would not be surprised to see miga bread being sold on a giant roller, paper-towel style.
I can't say I love dulce de leche but I do like a well made tres leches cake which in my mind is somehow related. But this summation of the dessert's place in the world made me smile - that would be true about all the mishti I once loved and still available in great abundance in Kolkata but I can't work up nearly the same enthusiasm I once had for them.
Dulce de leche is a culinary cry for help. It says "save us, we are baffled and alone in the kitchen, we don't know what to do for dessert and we're going to boil condensed milk and sugar together until help arrives". This cloying dessert tar is so impossibly sweet that you wish you were ten years old again, just so you could actually enjoy it.
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