The biggest surprise for me in South America, at least Chile, Argentina and Uruguay was the lack of spicy food. They have good meats and other tasty dishes but very little to top them with. No steak sauce, hot sauce, or salsa. Often, we’d get french fries and have to ask to ketchup brought to the table.

Before visiting South America, I imagined they would have lots of spicy foods like Mexico. The continent of South America is kinda shaped like a pepper, so is Argentina and Chile. With a name like Chile, I thought something must be spicy.

At an Asado (BBQ) with some of lisa’s friends outside of Buenos Aires they did have a small bottle of “spicy sauce” which lisa and I used. They all warned us that it was very hot when they saw us pouring it on our steaks, but it was only mildly spicy.

My favorite meal thus far was a restaurant called Olsen which served upscale Norwegian food in Buenos Aires. We started with 5 Norweigian canapes paired with 5 different shots of vodka. Several of them did not have seafood in them which I appreciated. Lisa had a fish dish while I tried the cherry and deer ravioli which was fantastic. We had a bottle of Argentine wine with our meal and then tried the dessert sampler which came with 5 amazing desserts including a chocolate mountain with a molten dulce de leche heart.