Mendoza is the main city in Argentina’s wine country. But besides the wine tourism, it also has amazing rivers to raft and the largest mountain in the Southern Hemisphere to scale, Aconcagua, at 6,900 meters. To cater to the up market wine tourists there are a plethora of first class restaurants at reasonable prices (compared to New York). So there is a lot to do in Mendoza. Yet for some reason, I really really did not like this city.
First off the actual city of Mendoza. Mendoza was demolished in a earthquake a while ago, so when they rebuilt the city, the city planners made the street blocks extra wide and very grid like. The city is a huge square, with a main square in the center, and four themed squares (spain, Italy) extending from each corner of the main square. On the good side, it’s impossible to get lost in Mendoza. And while the town squares were a nice touch, you couldn’t help but feel that the squares were erected as a half hearted attempt at an aesthetic façade. Half of the fountains weren’t even working. There is no beauty in the city; no city culture; no museums. It’s a grid, the buildings are ugly, and it’s immensely overcrowded.
The surrounding area of Mendoza. Perhaps I chose the wrong wine tour. Perhaps I chose the wrong day to go rafting. But the wine tour that I went on was horrible. There was an olive oil plant that we visited along with the two vineyards, and that was infinitely more interesting and educational. I learned that olive oil is made purely from crushing olives with nothing being added. 60% of the olive is water and the olive pits contain about 10% of the olive’s oil. Everything is conserved; the olive water is used to water the crops, and the ground olive pits and skins are rendered to a hard bark like substance that is used for fueling the factory. The olive oil comes in multiple grades such as extra virgin, virgin, etc. These grades are based on the acidity of the olive oil with extra virgin olive oil having less than 1% of acidity. The quality can be controlled by picking and processing the olives just as they ripen to ensure the purest oil with the least acidity.
I signed up for a rafting trip for the following day as the trips came highly recommended from other travelers, Mendoza apparently has some of the best rapids in Argentina. But when I returned to my hostel after dinner on the first day, I was told that there were not enough people to fulfill the tour minimum and they would have to cancel the rafting expedition. So I bummed around all day and then worked on my blog.
I went to two really nice restaurants in Mendoza’s plush restaurant area near the town square. One was an Asian fusion restaurant that had the first location outside of the city and due to popular request opened another location in the middle of town. That has to be good right? The second was a jam packed steak house that I walked past on the first day and decided to try on the second day. Note to self – temper your expectations on any type of “Asian” food while in South America. I suppose some key ingredients are just too hard to find here or the flavors must be adjusted to suit the local customers because I have yet to find anything that resembles real Asian food. The bread and spread at the Asian restaurant were a nice touch, and the hot chicken salad with apples and raisins was good. But the lamb masala, the restaurant’s supposed specialty, was watery and bland, lacking the punch and spice that comes with good Indian food. The accompanying Nan was a thick pancake like pad of dough that was neither flaky nor absorbent. It just kind sat in the watery masala and got soggy, not properly sopping up the supposedly rich spicy mess which it is intended to do. The second restaurant, a steak place, was something that I looked forward to all day while I was working on my blog and stewing over my missed white water rafting trip. Perhaps that was my mistake. Perhaps pessimism is the best optimism. That way I’ll always be pleasantly surprised no matter what the outcome. Perhaps I’ve just been pampered with amazing steaks at all the other Argentinean cities that I’ve visited. If you love meat, Argentina should be a food destination. They don’t have much in the way of food variety or creatively. But they sure know how to make an amazing steak, except in the one steak restaurant that I picked in Mendoza. The rich cream and tomato sauces drowned out the bife de lomo and the steak was well on its way to being burnt. The steamed veggies were nice though.
If you can’t tell, I didn’t really like Mendoza.
Posts
