The Meat of the Matter in Argentina

Years ago when I was making my way with a backpack through Argentina, I
made a stop along the road in a dusty little town whose name escapes me. I took a short stroll through the town’s
streets, which took a mere minute or so, and dropped into a run-down, uninviting-looking restaurant on a lonely corner.
When the waiter asked what I wanted, my first inclination was to have the roast chicken.

That sounded just
fine, a perfect way to get a belly full of lunch before tossing my guitar back over my should and continuing up the
road. But then the word parrilla caught my eye, and I
thought "a steak? for lunch? why not?!" Now, you might say, duh, everyone knows Argentina is steak country,
but I wasn’t thinking clearly. I’d just spent four hours on the road and a steak just didn’t seem like the thing to
order. Well, that steak, and several subsequent parillas, remain the best meat I have ever had. Even today, after many
trips to Peter Luger’s in Brooklyn, I’ve yet to find a cut of beef that matched those I had in Argentina. And I love to
eat steak.

And so I was intrigued and delighted to read this homage to Argentinean steak over at
an obscure little journal called idleword. I cold go on and on about the heavenly gustatory bliss of chewing a piece of
bloody cow flesh, but I’ll let the writer here, and the accompanying photos do it for me. Suffice it say, my belly
is rumbling as I write and my fond memories of those succulent cuts are nearly as vivid as the day of that first beefy
meal.