Presidente Roberto M. Ortiz 1827 (between Guido and Quintana), Recoleta

[Also has a downtown pub location at Paraguay 428]

The Buller brewpub in Recoleta is one of the few places in Buenos Aires where you can get a proper pint of beer. By ‘proper’, I mean two things. Firstly, served in a traditional pint glass. That is key. Beer just tastes better that way. But secondly, and far more importantly, the BEER MUST TASTE GOOD, and not like the mass-produced cats piss that is served in the majority of bars across the world, and is especially prevalent in Argentina, where Quilmes, high on preservatives and additives but low on any kind of taste whatsoever, prevails.

In fact, at first look it seems so difficult to get decent beer at a reasonable price in Buenos Aires, that you might just give up. I know I did… I tried for a while, then decided I would just have to forget about this great drink that is so close to my heart for the duration of my stay in Argentina. But then I took a trip home to the UK at Christmas, including a pilgrimage to the Fuller’s brewery (makers of the finest beer on the face of the planet), and reignited my passion for the real drink of the gods. And so, once back in Buenos Aires, I decided to start a series of posts that will go under the grandiose name of…

The Great Buenos Aires Beer Hunt

I mean, what would life be like without good beer? It just doesn’t bear thinking about…

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Libertad 1078 (between Av. Santa Fe & Marcelo T de Alvear), Recoleta

Piola is an international chain of pizzerias, originally hailing from Treviso, Italy, but now with many restaurants in the USA, Mexico, Chile, Brazil and Argentina. However, it seems as they spread far and wide, they didn’t lose much of the supposed stereotypical Italian arrogance on arriving in Buenos Aires. Here’s a little example from the Piola website:

“Piola opened in Argentina in April 1993, arriving directly from Treviso, Italy. It revolutionized the Buenos Aires gastronomy to such a point that the local press and industry speak of a before and after PIOLA in Buenos Aires.”

Hmmmm… Suffice to say, I’ve never heard anyone here speak of such a sea change in Buenos Aires cuisine. Yes, it’s all well and good that they are so sure about the groundbreaking quality of their food… but more pertinently, does the Pizza stand up to stringent Buenos Aires Argentina Guide testing? Stay tuned to find out, Pizza fans…

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[29th January - 4th February 2007]

Sorry I’m late with the Buenos Aires blog roundup this week guys… I have been busy as usual, and at the weekend wrote what would have been one of my best blog posts of all time (seriously!), only for my PC to crash just before I clicked publish, losing the whole thing! I was so annoyed that I couldn’t bring myself to try posting something again until now… that will learn me for not updating to the new version of Wordpress (my blogging software), which apparently has an auto-save feature. Silly me.

Anyway, onto the blog roundup, which this week inaugurates a new feature… a section for my most favorite posts of the week!

Buenos Aires Blog Posts of the Week

• I just loved Ken’s description of the dog walkers in Buenos Aires and the accompanying picture, though not quite as much as I love to see the dog walkers with their huge packs of mutts each morning as I walk to catch the bus to work
• I always like a good post about the prevalence of mullets in Buenos Aires. And Isabelle Lagarde’s blog entry in this field certainly doesn’t disappoint
• OK, so Buenos Aires isn’t Paris. But it does have some lovely Parisian-esque domes, which came into Robert’s ‘Line of Sight’ this week. I hope he didn’t get a crick in his neck…

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[22nd - 28th January 2007]

Well, it’s been quite a busy week here in Buenos Aires blogland. Firstly, my blog now has a new name, with the word ‘Argentina’ replacing the redundant ‘Travel’. This has already seen a marked increase in people finding the site by searching “Buenos Aires, Argentina”, so it wasn’t such a bad decision after all
Secondly, quite a few of us Buenos Aires bloggers only went and got mentioned in Clarin, the main daily newspaper here in BA. But more of that to come in the roundup, so on with the show…

Things to See and Do in Buenos Aires

• As I seem to keep saying every week, Karine has once again posted some excellent photos of Buenos Aires landmarks, including Plaza Congreso, with a view of the lovely twin red domes of the La Inmobiliaria building & the exquisite Palacio Barolo beyond them, a quaint little antiques shop in San Telmo, some of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo doing their thing in the plaza, the spooky old University of Engineering building in Recoleta (just round the corner from my new apartment!), and in Buenos Aires Province, some crazy pictures of the packed beaches at Mar del Plata - so that’s where all the people in the city disappeared to this month!
• Argentina’s Travel Blog sends one of it’s legion of writers to investigate the many Lakes and Parks of Palermo
• Ken goes shopping in Once, which is recommended if, like me (and I guess Ken too!), your clothing purchase decisions are based more on necessity and price than style or fashion!
• I got off my arse and wrote a little something about the beautiful San Pedro Gonzalez Telmo Church in, you guessed it, the barrio of San Telmo

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Humberto 1º 340 (between Defensa & Balcarce), San Telmo

[Open Monday - Saturday, 8:30am to Midday and 4pm to 7pm. Sundays, 1pm to 6pm.]

I like churches.

Born and raised a good Catholic boy, I was.

…but that has nothing to do with why I like churches. I’m an agnostic, and instead like them because God generally gets some of the best architecture around. And in Buenos Aires it’s no different. So, this is the start of an attempted series on churches in BA, which may well be spread out over several years, cunningly hiding it’s series-ness from view.

The San Pedro Gonzalez Telmo church (try saying that after a few pints), is also known as the Nuestra Señora de Belén (Our Lady of Belen) church. A good church can never have too many names in my book.

A Little Church History

Some Jesuits named Blanqui, Bautista, Primoli and Schmidt designed the original and kicked off the building in 1734. That makes it one of the oldest churches in the city. But not the oldest, which I’ll cover at some point soon I guess. The church’s architecture was then added to and restored a fair few times up to the present, which accounts for it’s lovely eclectic style. Apparently it is ‘neo-colonial’. I prefer to call it ‘fancy iced wedding cake’:

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