Why Argentine restaurants are crowded with the crisis – 06/21/2023 – World

Wineglasses clinked in an art nouveau dining room that gleamed in its restored splendor. It was a tasting night at the restaurant, an old renovated cafe that is over a century old in Buenos Aires.

From the kitchen came beetroot tartar, grilled squid and a perfect rib-eye steak, followed by a velvety chocolate mousse.

“We are betting everything on the opportunity of the gastronomic scene in Argentina”, says Pedro Díaz Flores in a tour of the restaurant, Águila Pabellon, which he co-owns. It is the 17th gastronomic establishment he opens in Buenos Aires in the last 18 months.

In Buenos Aires, Argentina’s cosmopolitan capital, a world-class culinary scene is growing and thriving. This wouldn’t necessarily be news were it not for the fact that Argentina finds itself in the midst of a massive financial crisis.

Inflation is at more than 114% — the fourth highest in the world — and the value of the Argentine peso has plummeted, dropping 25% in just a three-week period in April. But it is the devaluation of the peso that fuels the growth of the restaurant industry.

Argentines want to get rid of the national currency as soon as possible. As a result, members of the middle and upper classes have been going out to eat more often. Entrepreneurs and chefs are reinvesting their income in new restaurants.

“Crises are opportunities,” says Jorge Ferrari, who recently reopened a historic German restaurant that had closed its doors during the coronavirus pandemic. “There are people who buy cryptocurrencies. There are people who look for other types of capital markets. This is what I know how to do.”

The boom is in a sense a facade. Everyone seems to be going out and having a good time. But in much of the country, Argentines are barely surviving, and hunger is on the rise.

In circles with greater purchasing power, the rush to go out and have fun is a symptom of a shrinking middle class that, no longer able to afford larger purchases or travel, chooses to live in the here and now, because people no longer know what to do. what tomorrow will bring or if your money will be worth anything. “The consumption you see is consumption for satisfaction – the happiness of the moment”, says Ferrari.

The city of Buenos Aires, interested in promoting the city’s gastronomic scene, has been tracking the volume of dishes sold in a sample of restaurants every month since 2015.

The latest numbers, for April, indicate that movement at restaurants is at one of the highest levels seen since tracking began: 20% above its 2019 high, before the start of the pandemic.

It’s not just famous establishments that are thriving. Outstanding residential areas of Buenos Aires have suddenly become destinations for food influencers, and this quickly leads to new crowds of porteños.

There are bars that feature drag shows that happen while you eat, vegan bakeries, verdant patios and fusions of global cuisines created by chefs who have taken their apprenticeships in kitchens around the world. One of the most popular places at the moment, Anchoita, which serves a modern version of traditional Argentine cuisine, only has reservations available for next year.

While the devalued peso has also been attracting tourists back to Buenos Aires with the retreat of Covid, it is the porteños themselves who are more present in the restaurants.

The boom is a phenomenon that encompasses different social classes, according to economist Santiago Manoukian, from Ecolatina consultancy. But it is mainly driven by people with medium or high incomes, many of whom have seen their incomes keep pace with inflation but are still having to adapt to the crisis.

Expenses such as a vacation or a car have become out of reach for many people, especially those in the middle class – so they are enjoying life in other ways.

But even lower-income freelance professionals, whose earnings have shrunk by 35% since 2017, according to data collected by Ecolatina, are dining out before their money devalues.

“This is the result of the distortions that affect the Argentine economy,” he explains. “You have a few extra pesos that will go up in smoke due to inflation. You need to do something, because you know that the worst thing would be to do nothing.”

In an orchard in Buenos Aires next to a tennis court, Lupe García, owner of four restaurants in the city and one on the outskirts, bent down to pluck something that looked like a miniature watermelon from a branch, but was actually actually a cucamelon, a fruit the size of a blackberry.

She was surrounded by lettuce, parsley, mint, alfalfa and purple shiso leaves, used to make tempura at one of her restaurants. Owned by Garcia and managed by agronomists at the University of Buenos Aires, the garden reflects the changing tastes of locals that García’s restaurants help promote.

She opened her most recent establishment in February in the Palermo neighborhood. This is the Neapolitan and Detroit-style pizzeria Orno. Even so, although the inflation crisis has attracted more customers to restaurants, it has also increased the complexity of their operations.

To save expense, Garcia has switched from printed menus at all of his restaurants to QR codes for websites that his staff can quickly modify. “Your supplier brings you beef and says the price has gone up 20%, and you have to raise all prices.”

In a busy area full of new food stalls in an alley near Buenos Aires’ Chinatown, Victoria Palleros waited for a plate of ramen noodles at Orei. “I think the generation before ours thinks more about saving, but we don’t,” said Palleros, 29, a civil servant.

Many Argentines buy US dollars in banknotes to save money, but “buying US$100 is almost half of a young person’s monthly salary,” she says. “Frankly, I think it’s better to go out and live well during the week than spend every month in a pinch.”