Some of you have an expectation that everything we eat is always amazing. Well Helen wasn’t feeling so well yesterday (she is much better now) so we weren’t focussing so much on looking for amazing food experiences…. So this food experience is for the team!

It is important to try and get a sense of the place. We were looking to see what middle class portenos do on a Saturday afternoon. Is it any great surprise that they go to the mall. We found this out at the Abasto mall quite an amazing mall built in a former wholesale fruit and vegetable market.

It has one of the biggest food halls I’ve seen, but get this… you can get a rib eye steak here for about $10 and the food hall serves wine. You can imagine that I was heading there… and I did. I was in the line waiting. At that point I realised there were going to be at least three interactions in Spanish 1) selecting and paying 2) selecting salads and 3) pickup. Not at all confident with my Spanish, I freaked out and left the queue. But the problem was where to find food that was easy to order.

You would have guessed McDonalds? Well close, I have an abiding dislike of McDonalds, so instead I chose the local alternative Mostaza. On a cultural side note, I did notice a teenage worker at Mostaza commencing her shift. She greeted each staff member as she arrived with a peck on the cheek the universal way of saying hola to your friends here.

Well you’ve scrolled past the picture to find out if it was any good. I can tell you that it was put together with as a much love as McDonalds and is about as good as it looks!

As a consolation, I did arrange for room service steak sandwich with a glass of Malbec. Total cost around $10. Try that an Australian hotel.

And… yes success at last…. this was very yum!