Rowdy folklore and dancing, skillful horsemanship, manly gauchos (Argentinean cowboys), inexhaustible amounts of grilled meat, empanadas, and other regional foods, fairly priced and beautifully handcrafted arts & crafts. Oh, yes. I do love the Feria de Mataderos. It’s one of my favorite Sunday activities in Buenos Aires. Watch our video to see if you want to add Mataderos to your list of things to do in Buenos Aires.

John and I went to the fair with an Argentinean friend and one of our long-term guests staying in The Pad. It was the first time any of them had gone. Sole laughed when I asked if she’d been to the fair before. “No, that’s for tourists, not porteños,” she said. Once we arrived, she realized her mistake. There are a few tourists, only those who’ve found the one paragraph most guidebooks devote to the fair or those who know someone here who has recommended it. But these are not your average tourists. Though we also didn’t see many average porteños (Buenos Aires locals) at the fair either.

That’s a large part of the beauty of the weekly Feria de Mataderos. It’s a neighborhood fair held for people who love folklore (Argentinean folk music) and it’s unlike anything you’ll find in the city.

Mataderos (i.e., Slaughterhouses)

Map of the barrios of Capital Federal

The neighborhood the fair is named after, Mataderos, is where the city meets the country. It’s one of the last barrios (neighborhoods) still inside the district of Capital Federal and in the past this was where the cattle was brough in from the provinces to be slaughtered and distributed to the rest of the country. In fact, Mataderos means slaughterhouse in Spanish. This neighborhood is also called Nueva Chicago because it share its slaughterhouse role with its U.S. counterpart.

Smoke from the grills and a stack of chorizos.

While the slaughterhouses have moved elsewhere, the fair is packed with parillas (grills) and loads of meat. Just look at the smoke hovering above the stands and under the trees in our opening shot of the video and you’ll get the idea.

My favorite part is the music and dancing on and around the stage in the main plaza. The Sunday that we went was El Día del Niño (The Day of the Children). There were groups of kids performing traditional zambas and chacareras (Argentinean folklore rhythms) on stage.

Dancers performing a zamba on the main stage.

I love how the boys in the chacarera show off their fancy footwork. And the handkerchiefs in the zamba with the girls’ flowing skirts, their rounded arms and slight embraces is just beautiful. The group of younger kids (mostly girls) in the video are playing the traditional drum of folklore. It’s called a bombo legüero and these kids were fantastic.

Gaucha, clapping to the rhythms of folklore.

Around the stage you’ll see plenty of other couples dancing, too. Some are dressed in traditional gaucho wear; others are in boots and jeans. I don’t really know the steps, but I’ve often been invited to dance with a local and it’s not that difficult to fake some ability to dance if you watch the women next to you and just do as they do. Jump right in if the urge hits you.

Gaucho Culture

Gorgeous gaucho stirrups.

The fair really is a celebration of guacho culture. Just down the road from the main stage you’ll see gauchos on horseback in full gear. Beautiful gear. Their stirrups look nothing like the ones you see back in the States. Gaucho pants are called bombachas (which incidentally is also the word in castellano for underwear). They use either a sash-like belt or a leather one with fancy medallions and typically have a knife tucked in at their back.

La Carerra de Sortija, or the Race for the Ring.

At about 3:00 pm, a group of gauchos will start warming up on Av. Lisandro de la Torre for the Carerra de Sortija (Race of the Ring) where they’ll race their horse down the road, standing up as they reach a metal frame with a small ring dangling from it. The idea is to use the stick in their hand to pull off the ring. It’s pretty impressive.

Agustin, the youngest gaucho, races for the ring.

As is fitting for El Día del Niño, in our video only the youngest gaucho actually grabbed the ring.

Street Food: What to Eat

The asador tending to the barbecue.

The fair offers some of the best regional food in the city. But don’t expect to be able to ask for your steak to be cooked medium rare. The meat is slow-cooked with lots of hands tending the fire. You might want to try the vacíopan (flank steak sandwich) or the choripan (sausage sandwich). There are plenty of other options, too.

Stuffing the homemade empanadas.

Homemade empanadas, little half-moon pies stuffed with meat, or chicken, or corn (called humita here), or ham and cheese, or onion and cheese. If you want something more hearty try the locro (a corn-based stew which sometimes has tripe) and tamales(corn dough filled with a shredded meat stuffing and wrapped in husks; tamales here are never spicy).

Damon digs into some locro.

In the main plaza, behind the stage, there are lots of tables and chairs where you can actually sit down and have a glass of wine or a beer with your street food. And, of course, there are several restaurants with outdoor tables all along the streets of the fair. The food there is pretty much the same as in the stands, but you’ll have a waiter and you can sit and watch the show or the people for as long as you like.

Shopping: What to Buy

It reads, "Hold on to me tight and suck on me slowly."

Another great reason to go to the Feria de Mataderos is to buy gifts to bring back home. The prices are much better than in the city and you’ll find a lot of traditional Argentinean arts & crafts that you won’t see elsewhere. Maté cups (cups traditionally made from gourds used for the ubiquitous tea-like infusion gauchos drink) and bombillas (the metal straws with a filter that you drink maté through), handcrafted knives with elaborate details, ponchos made from llama or alpaca, cool wine racks made from horseshoes, handcrafted jewelry, toys, and candles, you name it.

Handmade jewelry stand at the fair.

There are also a lot of stands filled with local foods like cheese, alfajores (traditional cookies that are like a shortbread sandwich with caramel in the middle), marmalades and preserves, liquors made from eggs or chocolate or even dulce de leche liquor. And if you think you might want to buy some gaucho bombachas, this is the place to do it. Way better prices than in the touristy shops in the city.

When The Fair Takes Place

The fair takes place every Sunday (from April through December) and on Saturday evenings starting at 6:00 pm during warmer months (in February and March). It’s closed in January.

Getting to Mataderos

It’s a bit of a hike (close to an hour bus ride) to get out to Mataderos. If you’re in the Palermo area, you can take the 55 bus. If you’re in San Telmo, you’ll need to get to Retiro first and then take the 92.

You could also take a taxi if you don’t want to try the bus routes. Our taxi from San Telmo cost us roughly 40 pesos (at 10 pesos each it was probably worth it to get us out there early). We took the 92 bus back to Retiro when time was not an issue. I also just ran across a review on Trip Advisor written by a guy here in Buenos Aires that offers trips to the fair in his Lincoln Town car.

Other Blogs on Mataderos

Buenos Aires Tours has a great post about the Feria de Mataderos and some videos of gauchos in the Carerra de Sortija. And another expat blogger, Sallycat, has a fun write up about her trip out to the fair which ended up being a trip to the neighborhood as it was summer and the fair wasn’t happening. And lastly, Travel with Pen and Palate Argentina has a nice post with some wonderful photos of the fair.

Have you been to the Feria de Mataderos? What was your favorite part of the fair?

It’s Easter weekend so John and I decided we’d go to our favorite fishmonger to see what looked good. Since it was Good Friday, and since Catholics (which most Argentines are) aren’t supposed to eat meat on Good Friday, the market was busier than we’ve ever seen it.

Look at that line all the way out of the door.

We learned about El Delfin from a restaurant we ate at a couple of months ago. It’s a great, albeit a bit pricey, restaurant in Puerto Madero called Chila. They had oysters on the menu and while we didn’t order the oysters that night, I asked the server if they typically have oysters and where they buy them. She directed us to El Delfin in Barracas.

Map to El Delfin from San Telmo

We’ve been to El Delfin a couple of times now. They don’t always have oysters, so if that’s what we’re looking for we usually call in advance. They had oysters yesterday and we bought a dozen or so. They even had fresh shrimp (not frozen and not already cooked). This is a goldmine find here since most fishmongers sell shrimp either frozen or already cooked.

Fishmonger, El Delfin, in Barracas

For dinner last night, we had raw oysters with a sweet sauce. The sauce was made with rice wine vinegar (1 cup), a minced shallot, 1 chopped tomato, one inch of grated ginger, sugar (1 tbsp), cilantro (1/2 cup), and fresh black pepper. They were amazing. We’ll cook the shrimp with garlic this afternoon and then grill calamari to go with them. It’s a real treat to find a great fish market just a few blocks away from us.

Oysters from El Delfin

If you’re here in Buenos Aires and staying in an apartment or vacation rental, keep El Defin on your list for one of the nights you plan to cook and hang out with some wine and music instead of heading out to a restaurant. In this land of beef lovers, great fish markets aren’t very common.

Seafood Empanadas from El Delfin

You might even want to just run over there for some of their exquisite seafood empanadas or a dish of paella. Look at these. They’ve got tuna, cod, octopus, calamari and several other varieties. It’s no wonder the line was so long on Good Friday.

Pulpo a la Gallega and other Fishy Dishes

Felices Pascuas y Buen Provecho!

Useful Information:
El Delfin Pescaderia y Marisqueria
Deliveries call 4301-6079
Azara, 99 (Barracas)
http://www.e-eldelfin.com.ar

I should begin by pointing out that I don’t know how to dance tango. I think it’s amazing though and I’d love to learn. So when my mom and niece were coming to visit, I decided it was time to take a couple of classes with people who know as little as I do and with whom I have no problem looking like a fool.

Trying to decide where to take tango classes in Buenos Aires is about is no easy task. I asked everyone I know who’s in the tango world and there was no consensus. A lot of people recommended La Viruta, the massive milonga in Palermo, but I had heard the classes at La Viruta were very crowded and I also knew that it attracts a younger group of people. Worried my mom might feel out of place and that we wouldn’t get any one-on-one attention from the instructors, I looked for something smaller. Tango Brujo was recommended in a discussion on Couchsurfing. And since I think the crowd over at Couchsurfers is pretty cool (read an earlier post about this project here), it sounded right for us, too.

Mom & Jordan on Stairs at Tango Brujo

Tango Brujo is housed in a beautifully renovated building on Esmeralda in downtown Buenos Aires. There’s a gorgeous shop on the ground floor. The shoes and clothes are enough to make anyone want to become a tango aficionado. Unbelievably cool stuff! Head upstairs for the cozy dance studio.

They offer classes for all levels and throughout the week, which makes planning a lot easier. We took two: Introduction to Tango, and the Beginners and Intermediate. What I liked about our classes at Tango Brujo was that there weren’t too many people and yet there were enough of us to change partners and get in a good bit of practice.

The Dance Floor

The classes were in English and Spanish and the instructors were excellent. They were great at figuring out how quickly they could move on to the next step, who needed a bit of individualized attention, and making sure everyone was dancing even though there were more women than men and pairing people up was sometimes hard to do.

Tango is as hard as I’ve always heard it was to learn. The problem for my mom, my niece and me was that in Louisiana we dance to Cajun or Zydeco music. It’s fast and loose. Hips move and bodies swing in Louisiana. By the end of the class, we’d learned to keep our hips still and wait for the guy to let us know what was coming. But sometimes it felt like I had to wait for an eternity and then I realized… that’s it. It’s that longing and resistance between the two that creates the mood.

An ex-boyfriend once told me I’d never be able to learn tango because I wouldn’t be able to let the guy lead (he was pretty mad at me when he said that). He may have been right, but now that I saw how that anticipation of the guy’s lead is how the couple manages to feel each other and know what’s coming without having to look at their feet or even at each other’s eyes and without their bodies even touching, I’m much more interested in trying to follow.

Here’s a short video of our first instructors, Pablo and Anita, at the end of the class showing us the steps we learned.

The classes cost 15 pesos per person. There’s a complete schedule on the beautiful Tango Brujo website.

I’m often asked which neighborhood (barrio) is better, San Telmo or Palermo Soho.  Here’s a brief description of the two barrios from an insider/outsider point of view to help you decide.

San Telmo (above) is tango and the past; Palermo Soho (below) is hip and modern.  Choosing between the two is really a matter of what you most want to experience here in Buenos Aires. San Telmo is New Orleans; Palermo is Miami. Or something like that.     

 San Telmo is walking distance to most sights; Palermo requires a taxi ride or a walk to the subway. Sights Nearby: Within walking distance from San Telmo are the Plaza de Mayo, la Casa Rosada, the cabildo, Cafe Tortoni,  Avenida Florida (the famous pedestrian street for shopping), Avenida Corrientes (loaded with theaters…. BA’s Broadway) with its obelisk, and Teatro Colon (although it’s currently being remodeled). 

In the area of Palermo, you’ll find: the Botanical Gardens, the zoo, the hippodrome, the polo field, major shopping centers on Avenida Santa Fe, the Evita Museum, MALBA (the museum of Latin American Fine Arts), and many gorgeous parks.  

Prices and Restaurants: San Telmo is cheaper than Palermo in part because it has more variety. You’ll find more inexpensive traditional parillas, pizza joints, choripan stands on the road, rustic eateries with wooden tables that have been there for ages, more Italian restaurants, a fantastic market for buying fresh produce, more bars and milongas (tango dance halls), and more traditional cafes.

In Palermo, you’ll find some of the best restaurants in Buenos Aires where the menus are more modern and innovative. Cafes and restaurants are trendy and pricey. There are more outdoor cafes in Palermo Soho than in San Telmo. It’s more difficult to get a traditional parilla (Argentinean barbeque) in Palermo. Some of the hottest nightspots are in Palermo, but there aren’t as many bars where one can stop in for a drink and a game of pool.

The Streets and Shopping: Palermo is cleaner and has less riffraff than San Telmo. San Telmo is more crowded and more bohemian than Palermo. Both areas are very active on weekends.  The antique fair in San Telmo brings in hordes of locals and tourists. Streets are filled with live performances that are out of this world. Palermo’s weekend fair is for designers. The square is filled with stands where you can buy jewelry, shirts, etc. 

Shopping is better in Palermo than in San Telmo, but it comes with a higher price tag. San Telmo is changing though. A few stores that are in Palermo are opening in San Telmo, too. But for clothes, shoes, jewelry, and art, Palermo has more to offer.

So, do you want a filet with a dijon sauce and fancy table settings or some empanadas, pizza, and  steak served on wooden plates? Answer this question and you’ll know where to stay. 

So, you’re visiting Buenos Aires and need to take gifts back to friends and family. Normally I’d send you to the fair in Mataderos, but during summer they move it to Saturday nights instead of all-day Sunday, and there are other things to do on a Saturday night. 

After all, it is summer (although the picture here was taken in winter), and getting out of the city to enjoy a bit of nature and sunshine is always a good idea. So I recommend a day-trip to Tigre (just north of Buenos Aires). Plus, you can literally buy every present you’ll need right there at about 1/3 the price in the city. 

 Take a 40-minute train ride from Retiro (the train station in the center of Buenos Aires) up to Tigre. Once there, you’ll probably want to head over to the tourist information office. It’s probably the most well-stocked one I’ve seen in Argentina. Head out the station and look for the McDonald’s arches. The tourism office is next door.Tigre is in the Delta. It was once the vacation spot of the elite. Now, it’s the weekend getaway for those who can’t spend the summer in Punta del Este. But I almost prefer it to Punta del Este. 

Boat rides through the rivers. Walks or bike rides along the islands. Rowing through canals past beautiful homes and screened in porches (bring mosquito repellent). Delicious restaurants. And, the amazing fruit market at the port of Tigre. They sell much much more than fruit. 

The market is huge. People from Buenos Aires often go there for furniture (particularly wicker furniture and hammocks). But you’ll also find great souvenirs.Here’s a list of presents I’ve taken back home that seemed a success. 

For men: belts, knives, ponchos, gaucho hats, bolero tie clasps, wallets, or soccer shirts for sports fans.

For women:jewelry, leather anything, or shawls made of wool or llama. 

Standbys: dulce de leche (a type of caramel that’s fantastic on bread. It’s sort of the Argentine nutella), alfajores (cookies with dulce de leche inside… to die for), CDs (of tango or Argentinean folclore if you are buying for country music fans), mate and yerba (the haylike infusion you’ll see Argentines drinking EVERYWHERE).