Food on the Road: Bariloche

Bariloche is a nature-lover's heaven... but if you love ice cream, or chocolate or steak, it's your heaven too.

When we were hanging out in Chile, we talked to a British couple who had just come from Bariloche. They raved about Bariloche's food, and gave us a long list of places we needed to check out while we were in town. Once we got to our hostel (the great La Barraca Suites), we wanted to confirm these rumors, so asked them the three most important questions:

 1. Where can we get the best steak in town?     
 2. What is your favorite ice cream shop?      
 3. Is there a place where we can get amazing chocolate?

Interestingly, our hosts confirmed the locations we'd heard from our British friends, so we set out to enjoy all of the deliciousness.

Waiting in line at Albertos

After our long journey into the woods, we decided we were in great need of a hefty piece of steak. The steak at El Boliche de Albertos was supposed to be the biggest and best piece of meat in town. We got there before the place opened, at 7:50pm. (In Argentina, people eat dinner closer to 9 or 10pm... much later than we can handle!) It's a good thing we got there early; there was a line halfway down the block! Thankfully, we got the 2nd to last table available in the place. The restaurant itself was pretty neat. We were able to walk around and see the guys cooking all of the steaks on huge grill. But, as these things often go, the quality of the food wasn't quite up to the hype. The steaks were huge and delicious, but not nearly as awesome as we'd expected. That didn't stop us from devouring them entirely.

Steak, Malbec and tons of fries

Tom and the remains of his steak

Grill master at work

 We'd also heard great things about Juaja, an Argentinian ice cream shop. We love ice cream, and we love trying out local "cuisine," so we made sure to stop at Juaja two times during our trip to Bariloche. You know, just to be sure we got a good feel for the "menu." We were not disappointed. I think they had something like a dozen different kinds of chocolate ice cream, plus dozens of fruity, cream, and other flavors. My favorite was the Calafate flavor, which was made from a wild Patagonian fruit. [Update: Tiramisu was better.] While the Juaja ice cream was delicious, my vote still goes to the gelato we got in Santiago, where the mint ice cream tasted like the mint had been freshly plucked from someone's backyard. (Sorry guys, can't remember the name... it'll have to remain a secret spot, for now.)

The cones are huge!

Hot chocolate from Jauja's on a day when it was too chilly for ice cream

Ice cream!

And on our last day in town, we realized we hadn't found any of Bariloche's legendary chocolate. [Bariloche was settled by a number of Swiss and German settlers who, thankfully, brought with them incredible chocolate-making abilities.] We headed to Mamushka, one of about a dozen chocolate shops in town. The whole store smells like chocolate, and it's always bustling with people. We decided to suck it up and spend the $12 for chocolates, knowing that we'd regret it if we didn't splurge a little. And... oh man. Mamushka makes the best chocolate I've ever had. It's gooey. And rich. If I could have a piece of this chocolate every day for the rest of my life, I'd live to be 182.

Me, with chocolate

Mmmm

Happy eating!

-R