Best Argentinian Cities for Food: A Regional Guide

Which Argentinian cities are best for food?

If you have a week in Argentina, Buenos Aires alone won't show you the country's food. The provinces each tell a different story, shaped by who immigrated there, what grows in the soil, and what the altitude does to a vine. Here's the shortlist of cities every food traveller should know, and what each one is famous for.

Buenos Aires, of course, is a city in its own right, and we cover it in detail in our companion piece on the Buenos Aires food guide. The list below is everywhere else.

What's the food in Mendoza like?

Mendoza sits at the foot of the Andes, on the western edge of Argentina, and it's the country's wine capital. The high-altitude vineyards and arid climate produce some of the world's best Malbec, and the food culture has grown up around the wine. Bodegas (wineries) host long, multi-course asado lunches paired with their own bottles. Olive groves dot the same valleys as the vines, and Mendoza's extra-virgin olive oil is its quiet second export.

What to order in Mendoza:

• Chivito: slow-cooked baby goat, often spit-roasted, the regional alternative to beef.
• Asado mendocino: typically more vegetables and chimichurri than the BA version, often served at the bodega itself.
• Olives and olive oil: tasting flights at producers near Maipú.
• Empanada Mendocina: often baked rather than fried, with beef, onion and a slightly sweeter dough.
• Malbec: paired with everything. For what's actually pourable in Australia, see our Malbec pairing guide for Sydney.

Mendoza's food culture is unhurried. A bodega lunch can run from 1pm to 6pm and still feel like it ended too soon. For the Sydney take on the same fire-and-meat tradition, see our asado at home guide.

What's special about Cordoba's food?

Cordoba sits in the central highlands, halfway between Buenos Aires and the Andes, and it's the alfajor capital of Argentina. The Cordobesa alfajor is distinctive: a flakier biscuit, often filled with fruit jam (membrillo or peach) as well as dulce de leche, and dusted with sugar or coated in white meringue. Whole bus-station racks are dedicated to local alfajor brands, and every visitor leaves with a box for the relatives.

Beyond alfajores, Cordoba is known for:

• Picante peanuts: spiced, salted, sold in paper cones at the markets.
• Empanada Cordobesa: notably sweet-savoury, often with sugar in the dough and raisins in the filling.
• Locro: a thick stew of corn, beans, pumpkin and beef, traditionally eaten on national holidays.
• Salame seco serrano: a dry-cured salami from the surrounding sierras.

Cordoba is also Argentina's student city, so casual, affordable, big-portion eating defines the everyday food scene. Cheap milanesa, big pasta, lots of pizza.

What's an empanada Salteña?

Salta is in Argentina's north-west, near the Bolivian border, at altitude, and it makes what many Argentinians consider the country's best empanada. The empanada Salteña is small, juicy, and filled with beef (or sometimes chicken), potato cubes, hard-boiled egg, green onion, and a single black olive. Importantly, the dough is enriched, often with beef tallow, which gives the pastry its distinctive crispness when fried.

What makes a Salteña a Salteña:

• Hand-cubed potato in the filling (not minced)
• A single olive per empanada, traditionally with the pit still in (be warned)
• Beef or chicken, never both
• Cumin and paprika as the dominant spices
• Repulgue (the edge fold) of 13 pleats by tradition

Salta is also famous for its other northern dishes:

• Locro: thicker and spicier than the Cordobesa version, often served on the 25th of May (national day).
• Humita: a creamy corn paste wrapped in corn husks and steamed, sometimes with cheese.
• Tamales: an Indigenous heritage dish, corn dough wrapped around meat in a husk.
• Torrontés wine: Argentina's signature white grape, grown at extreme altitude. Our Torrontés guide covers Sydney availability.

Pedro's Carnivore Pack of 12 uses slow-cooked grass-fed beef brisket, closer in spirit to Buenos Aires than Salteña, but the slow-cooking philosophy is shared.

Why is Bariloche known for chocolate and lamb?

Bariloche is in northern Patagonia, on the shores of Lake Nahuel Huapi, and it looks more like Switzerland than South America. That's not an accident. Late-19th and early-20th-century waves of Swiss, German, Italian and Welsh immigrants settled this region, and their food traditions never left. Bariloche's main street is lined with artisan chocolate shops (chocolaterías) making truffles, bonbons, dark chocolate bars, and chocolate alfajores at a level rivalling Europe.

Patagonian lamb is the other half of the story. Lambs graze on Patagonia's windswept grasslands, and the regional asado technique is the cordero al palo: a whole lamb butterflied open, mounted on an iron cross, and cooked over wood embers for four to six hours. The result is smoky, tender, almost no seasoning beyond salt and chimichurri.

What else Bariloche does well:

• Patagonian trout: from the lakes, smoked or grilled.
• Welsh tea: in nearby Gaiman and Trevelin, Welsh-Patagonian tea houses serve scones, cream, and torta negra galesa (a dark spice cake).
• Mushrooms: foraged from the Andean forests, including the red Patagonian pine mushroom (morilla).

Pedro's Patagonia empanada (vegan, mushroom and spinach and kale in a distinctive green dough) takes its name from this region's forest-and-mountain food world, not from beef.

What's the regional food difference across Argentina?

The short version: the climate and the immigrant history determine almost everything.

The empanada is the perfect lens for seeing this. A Salteña, a Tucumana, a Mendocina and a Cordobesa are all the same dish in name only. Different fillings, different doughs, different cooking methods, different politics. Argentinians from each province will tell you with a straight face that theirs is the only real one.

How does Buenos Aires food compare to provincial Argentina?

Buenos Aires food is more European, more polished, more cosmopolitan. The bodegones serve Italian-influenced pasta and Spanish-influenced stews next to local milanesas and parrilla. The pace is late and lingering.

Provincial Argentina is more rooted and regional, tied to one ingredient or one technique. In Salta you eat what the high north produces. In Bariloche you eat what the Patagonian wind grows. In Mendoza you drink what the Andes makes possible.

For the Sydney version of that conversation, our piece on Argentinian food beyond empanadas covers what's available locally, and Argentinian food in Sydney is the umbrella overview.

How does Argentum's range reflect regional Argentinian food?

Pedro grew up in Argentina and cooked alongside his grandmother before bringing those recipes to Sydney. The five Argentum flavours, made in Bondi Beach, each nod to a different thread of Argentinian regional food:

• Carnivore: slow-cooked grass-fed beef brisket. The pampas beef tradition, distilled into a small pastry.
• Athlete: chicken with green olives and a touch of curry. The lighter, lunch-friendly side of Argentinian poultry empanadas.
• Classic: cheese, vegetarian. The Italian-Argentinian heritage of Buenos Aires food culture.
• Patagonia: vegan, mushroom and spinach and kale in a green dough. A nod to Bariloche's forest and mountain food world.
• Habibi Yalla: open-top Middle Eastern style beef, recognising the strong Lebanese and Syrian heritage that shaped northern Argentinian food. A bridge between Argentina and the Eastern Mediterranean.

For the full Pedro story, read from Buenos Aires to Bondi.

The Chef's Box includes all five, and the full collection is available across Sydney. Minimum order is $85, delivered frozen, and they keep for up to 6 months at minus 18 degrees Celsius.

Frequently asked questions

What's the best food city in Argentina?

Buenos Aires is the most diverse food city, but Mendoza is Argentina's wine and asado capital, and Salta produces what many consider the country's best empanada. For chocolate and lamb, Bariloche is unmatched. There is no single answer.

What's the difference between an empanada Salteña and a Tucumana?

The Salteña uses cubed potato and a single olive, with cumin and paprika as the dominant spices. The Tucumana uses knife-cut (not minced) beef, is famously juicy, and is traditionally fried in beef tallow. Both come from north-west Argentina but are fiercely defended as distinct.

Why is Mendoza famous for wine?

Mendoza sits at the foot of the Andes, with high-altitude vineyards, intense sunlight, dry air and pure snowmelt irrigation. These conditions are ideal for Malbec, the grape that became Argentina's signature variety. Mendoza now produces around 70 percent of Argentina's wine.

Is Bariloche really known for chocolate?

Yes. Swiss, German and Italian immigrants brought chocolate-making traditions to Bariloche in the early 1900s, and the town is now Argentina's chocolate capital. The main street is lined with chocolaterías producing truffles, bars and chocolate alfajores at European standards.

What's locro?

Locro is a thick stew of corn, white beans, pumpkin and beef or pork, with Indigenous Andean roots. It's traditionally eaten on Argentinian national holidays (25 May and 9 July) and is most associated with north-west provinces like Salta and Tucumán.

What's the food in Patagonia like?

Patagonian food is built around lamb, trout, mushrooms and chocolate. The climate is cold and the immigrant heritage is Welsh, Swiss and German rather than Italian or Spanish. Cordero al palo (whole spit-roasted lamb) is the signature dish.

Are alfajores from Cordoba or Buenos Aires?

Alfajores are eaten everywhere in Argentina, but Cordoba is considered the alfajor capital. The Alfajor Cordobés is flakier and often filled with fruit jam as well as dulce de leche, and is sold in distinctive sugar-dusted or meringue-coated styles.

Can I get regional Argentinian empanadas in Sydney?

Argentum Empanadas, made in Bondi Beach, offers five Argentinian-inspired flavours delivered frozen across Sydney. While they're Pedro's own recipes (not strict regional reproductions), each flavour nods to a different thread of Argentinian food culture, from pampas beef to Patagonia to Lebanese-Argentinian heritage.