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Complimentary Kir Royales start every meal at this classic French brasserie. While perfectly musky French onion soup, a collection of Ricard bottles, and the owner’s accent might seem cliché in a fancy restaurant stateside, Petanque is one of the only French eateries in BA. And it’s a good one. At dinner, foie gras and tiny, flavorful escargot are fine choices before the evenly crisped crème brûlée. Petanque’s wide-open, high-ceilinged dining room is an excellent Sunday brunch spot (Buenos Aires time: 3 p.m.!), where plenty of daylight, a glass of Chablis, and a croque monsieur with organic greens will transform last night’s hangover into today’s buzz. Or eat crêpes as you watch Sunday shoppers browse the street fair outside the window in the Plaza Dorrego (see Feria de San Pedro Telmo under Shopping).

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On a cold winter (June through August) night, this Basque tapas restaurant is a refuge with its cozy fireplace, tiny olives, and jamón serrano. Follow up the toothpicked morsels with a wide assortment of fancy cheeses (somewhat of a rarity in this blue-collar neighborhood, where most people subsist on meat, meat, and more meat) and a bottle of rough red Tempranillo, and you might not even have room for the classic Basque entrées like oxtail stew. Burzako’s got touches of a traditional Spanish tavern (like whitewashed brick walls and paintings by Spanish artists), but the crowd is young and decidedly modern. Excellent, friendly service and tasty, hearty desserts like red-wine-poached pears with ginger ice cream will make you wish you lived next door.

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The high-end restaurant connected to the Faena Hotel + Universe (see Hotels) serves molecular-gastronomy-type dishes like caviar in white chocolate foam. We recommend its more low-key cousin, El Mercado, which serves home-style food in a still-posh environment. You dine at one long communal table in what looks like a rich person’s home, with dark china cabinets and wood floors painted with colorful Fileteado, an art nouveau–ish filigree motif found all over BA. Though service can be a little pretentious, the fancified adobe-oven pizzas, homemade breads, and oven-baked empanadas are better here than most anywhere else in BA. That might not sound that special until you’ve tried enough hard triangles of gluey cheese elsewhere.

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For the highest-quality parrilla in the neighborhood (if not in all of Buenos Aires), La Brigada can’t be beat. Unusual beef and veal cuts like chinchulin (lower intestine), marucha (part of the short ribs), and offal (kidneys and udder) are cooked over a huge, open grill and speared from a communal platter onto your plate. Though lots of BA parrillas seem to attract backpackers and screaming kids, this more refined one is filled with upscale Palermo residents on casual dates and businessmen discussing wine. One urban legend has it that the police actually own this place (La Brigada means The Brigade or Squad). There’s always an armed lawman standing at the door. For the equivalent of about $25 per person, you’ll get grilled provoleta cheese (a local specialty in which a disc of this soft white cheese is put in a cassoulet dish and pushed to the back of the grill until it melts), a huge hunk of meat to share, spicy sausages, black pudding, more salad than you can finish, and a great bottle of red wine.

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This former pharmacy ditched all but its name when it changed to an eclectic restaurant, specializing in meats, fish, and pasta. Homemade pastas are fresh and chewy (choose the type of pasta on one page and the sauce on the next), and main courses range from the traditional Argentine bistec (beef steak) to more exotic dishes (for BA) like poached salmon. The gay-friendly spot has a rare rooftop terrace that’s great for enjoying a Gancia Batido (the Argentine national cocktail made from equal parts bitter lemon-rind liqueur, fresh-pressed lemon juice, and sugar) and watching passers-by on a sunny summer evening when daylight lasts until 10 p.m. Or partake of the wide selection of imported cheeses like Gorgonzola and Manchego with a bottle of Torrontés Argentine white wine on the comfy downstairs sofas in the bar area. Very laid-back staff and atmosphere.

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Built in 1864, El Federal is a national historic landmark, and hasn’t been remodeled. The bar itself is oddly proportioned: Long and filled with holes, it’s at waist level if you’re standing. The floor behind the bar is lowered, and until you sit down, you’ll feel like Alice in Wonderland trying to get through that tiny door, what with the barkeeps looking so very short. With its old metal advertising posters, faded lamps overhead, and ancient yet generally charming waiters who may have been there since opening day, El Federal maintains the atmosphere of a BA long gone yet still visible in corners and cracks. Faded elegance is a big part of the city’s charm, not just for tourists, but also for the crowds of local artists who have embraced old places like El Federal.

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One of the few authentically English bars in Buenos Aires, Gibraltar attracts a lively mix of expatriates and Argentines. A decent selection of beers and whiskeys can be found here, and the bar serves hot curries (spicy food is another rarity in BA), fish and chips, and shepherd’s pie. It gets especially crowded between midnight and 3 a.m., which is standard go-out time in Buenos Aires. Soccer’s always on the telly, and a dark-wood, library-esque setting contrasts with the see-and-be-seen scene in a nice, quirky way.

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Porteños love exaggerated décor, like La Divina Comedia’s Virgil-inspired heaven-and-hell theme. The upstairs bar and dining room are painted in white and blue, and the downstairs has deep red walls, sexy lighting, and intimate booths that surround a black-and-white-checked dance floor packed until dawn on the weekends. Sunday mornings, the downstairs is taken over by local clothing designers selling their fashionable wares.

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A dim front saloon that feels like a speakeasy plus a back room with live music make Perro Andaluz a great place to catch the local onda (“wave,” or better translated as “vibe”). The first Sunday of the month, musical jam sessions (tango, rock, and jazz, depending on the month) are organized by the government’s especially efficient department of tourism. Fridays are dedicated to jazz acts, and every Sunday night there are tango classes—call or just drop by to find out more about the music and class schedules.

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At sunset on Sundays, the antiques vendors in the Plaza Dorrego (see Feria de San Pedro Telmo under Shopping) pack up and make way for a serious outdoor milonga. Watch from a sidewalk café table or a park bench as neighborhood folks and well-known tango dancers come to practice their steps under lanterns. Keep an eye out for Don Bernabé, a 70-year-old who spins the beautiful twentysomethings as light-footedly as Fred Astaire and is renowned all over BA.

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A backpacker favorite, this is one milonga where the rules are thrown out the door. A style known as “tango queer” is danced, in which women can lead men, same-sex couples dance together, friends practice their steps with one another, and a relaxed atmosphere prevails. The space is decorated as a conventillo—an old building housing families of immigrants—with fake laundry hanging on lines from the ceiling.

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The newest milonga in San Telmo (January 2007) has live tango orchestras (most places have a DJ) and classes before the party begins. This is an extremely authentic (read: nontouristy) milonga: On one Friday, the only foreigners were advanced dancers who’d come to study in Buenos Aires. The place is unmarked; look for a red curtain over the doorway, then knock.

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This legendary antiques fair draws people from all over BA. Dozens of outdoor vendors hawk wooden gramophones, silver, heavy glass seltzer bottles, and other beautiful old things brought here in a hurry by European expatriates arriving a century ago. The best and most authentic antiques are on the raised plaza (where a tango milonga takes place after dark), but the street fair (feria) spills up onto Defensa for several blocks in both directions, drawing dreadlocked hippies drumming and selling handmade jewelry, street performers, and food sellers.

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Residents of Buenos Aires are noted for their sharp taste in design, and nowhere is this more apparent than in home-décor boutiques like L’Ago, where you might wind up buying a locally crafted, hand-painted steamer trunk to ship home all the stuff you didn’t need that you bought here. Plastic art deco–style bananas? Check. Goatskin rug? Check. Cool lamps and light fixtures? Got ’em.

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Toward the back of this beautiful, long gallery of indoor vendors, dozens of stalls sell Napoleonic-era china and crystal chandeliers. In front, pulp fiction, old movie posters, and expired currency boggle the eye. Watch for real antiques mixed with obvious and not-so-obvious fakes. Haggling over prices is not as common in BA as it is in other parts of South America, but some people here will do it. Try saying, “Usted puede hacerme un discuento?” (“Could you make me a deal?”) Don’t touch anything or take pictures without asking first, as the sometimes-crotchety vendors can be quite protective of their wares.

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Forty-three different designers have contributed exclusive garments to this spacious, modern store. Deals abound, such as a pair of handmade purple leather boots for the equivalent of $50. Clothes come direct from the runway at Buenos Aires Fashion Week, like hand-stenciled wrap dresses and men’s corduroy blazers with built-in gloves. Some designers are better than others, but everything’s interesting and the variety and cuts of clothing can’t be found elsewhere.

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This boutique is like crack for the fashionista. Local designers come in twice a week to drop off their latest and greatest, and since the owners usually buy only three of each design (one in each size), once something is gone, it’s gone. You’ll find everything from casual to cocktail: beautifully topstitched overcoats, canvas-and-rubber rain boots with a bunch of snaps and straps, hand-screened summer dresses and men’s dress shirts. Lingerie and great jewelry, too, plus a back patio where you can have a coffee and catch up on the neighborhood zines.

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Wussmann is in a hundred-year-old building that’s been remodeled with unusual touches, such as a glass cutout in the floor that shows a cellar-level bookstore below. Handmade journals, writing paper, and letter-storage boxes cost as much as they would stateside, but the quality matches the price here. You can design your own business or greeting cards with a salesperson, who will print them out on Wussmann’s 19th-century printing press. You have to wait for your cards, but only a day. This service will cost you about what you’ll pay for a nice dinner in BA (roughly 45 bucks).

A self-proclaimed “pop hotel” in the former red-light neighborhood of Constitución, Boquitas Pintadas (“Painted Mouths”) is a cultural center as well as a cozy little hotel. It has five rooms and one suite decorated by a different local artist every few months (a spray-painted cityscape mural with stars and planets in a night sky dominates one room; red curtains and leather furniture give another a sleek feel). After 8 p.m., a DJ spins in the restaurant until dawn. Air conditioning (a necessity in the sticky summer months of December and January), a swimming pool, a Jacuzzi, terraces, and a happenin’ bar add just the right touch of Argentine glamour.

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A huge wooden door decorated with ornate metalwork opens onto this exclusive hotel in the historic neighborhood of Monserrat. It’s a recently remodeled aristocratic home built in 1820 and owned by the same family until the current owners purchased it at the end of 2005. The 11 suites are arranged around two central patios, and wild, barely kempt gardens in those patios make you forget that you’re in the heart of a big city. A breakfast buffet, a communal living room, and handicapped-accessible rooms are other perks.

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South America’s first gay-oriented boutique hotel has set up shop in San Telmo, following the enormous success of its predecessor in Barcelona. The 48 soundproof, designer rooms feature LCD TVs, iPod docks, king-size beds, and hydromassage Jacuzzi baths. There’s also a rooftop garden with a heated swimming pool, whose glass bottom makes up the ceiling of the foyer, providing swimmers with a view to the lobby and guests a view of … well, whatever the swimmers are doing. Though designed and marketed with a gay clientele in mind, the hotel prides itself on diversity, and everyone is welcome. At the Axel Hotel in Barcelona, according to one user review on the website TripAdvisor, “there were many heteros who had no idea it was really a gay hotel—until they got to their room and found large artwork of a naked guy on the wall.”

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The Faena Hotel + Universe is an exercise in absolute decadence. Designed by Philippe Starck, it has crystal water taps shaped like swans in every bathroom and an entirely white dining room in the restaurant filled with unicorn heads. From the “lowliest” room to the modestly named Imperial Suite ($4,000), the 110 dwellings have a towel menu, Egyptian cotton sheets, and flat-screen home theaters. The restaurants, lobby, and lounges branch off an epic red-velvet hallway that runs the length of two city blocks. There’s also a spa with Turkish baths and beauty treatments by La Prairie, and nutritionists and a team of three “experts” are assigned to every guest to research the hottest places to shop, dine, and tango in the ever-changing hip barrios of Buenos Aires. The Faena’s Library Lounge bar has a killer fireplace and more than 500 beautiful books in several languages you can browse, and the theater stages shows each night, ranging from hip music to risqué burlesque. Book the rooms ending in “02”—they’re corner suites with the best views.

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An island of macrobiotic vegetarianism in a sea of meat, Abuela Pan (“Grandma Bread”) serves wholesome lunches. There are three separate set, multicourse lunch menus to choose from (one is low-calorie) that offer dishes like vegan brown-rice sushi with cucumbers, carrots, and tofu; or vegetarian chop suey (flash-sautéed vegetables like mung bean sprouts, cabbage, and celery bound with a starch-thickened sauce), fresh-squeezed carrot juice, and homemade milanesas de soja (soy patties) that are a far cry from the frozen, cardboard vegetarian options served at most BA restaurants. Abuela Pan’s bread is hand-kneaded and made with whole-wheat flour: dark, nutty, and a welcome relief from the ubiquitous soft white rolls that you’ll find at other places.

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The vibe of El Desnivel is bigger, busier, and more fun than at most other parrillas. Sides of beef and whole goats are carted from the butcher store next door and thrown on enormous grills, then served family style to rowdy Malbec-drinking groups. The bustling waiters have 20-table sections, so service is no-frills: You order your meat; the waiter comes with a platter and slaps it down on your plate, then walks away. The thick, caramel-custardy homemade flan for dessert is a far cry from the wobbly, watery dish most North Americans know. Be sure to request a table in the main restaurant rather than on the newly remodeled patio if you want to be up in the mix. You might be able to get fancier meat elsewhere (like at La Brigada, see “High End”), but you won’t get the party experience you get here.

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Equally appropriate for breakfast, lunch, dinner, or a 1 a.m. snack, Territorio is both a café and a bar. We’ve included it under restaurants because the proprietors brew their own beer, bake their own bread, and cure their own charcuterie, and it’s all delicious. The house-made honey mead and barley wine are excellent, high-alcohol relief from the omnipresent, watery national beer of choice, Quilmes. Territorio also has the best artisanal imported beer list in the neighborhood, with plenty of Scottish and Belgian varieties. Patagonian specialties such as cubed goat cheese, pastrami, smoked deer, and wild boar prosciutto (in BA you’ll usually just find salami when it comes to charcuterie) are served on a board with small loaves of the home-baked bread. The specialty house sandwiches, on more of the same tasty bread, make excellent fuel for people-watching and intellectual café talk.

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As much a part of Buenos Aires’s history as tango master Carlos Gardel or political corruption, Café Tortoni has operated continuously since 1858. The extremely crowded wooden tables span across an endless-seeming marble floor upstairs, and downstairs a cozy salon has jazz and authentic tango shows. Classic Argentine café fare like wooden boards with picadas (cubes of cheese, pickled vegetables, and cuts of meat) and Spanish-influenced “chocolaty churros” (fried dough sticks to dunk in thick, rich hot chocolate) make a great snack any time of the day or night, and there’s rarely an hour when Café Tortoni won’t be packed. Don’t let the crowds deter you: They’re there for a reason.

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Unlike dense scoops of the Italian variety, Buenos Aires’s gorgeous gelatos are piled on a cone with a paddle, so they’re pyramidal, like soft-serve ice cream. One of the best places to try them is Dylan, whose spare white interior and sidewalk benches are filled with people licking a cone year-round. In the summer, the shop’s delivery bicycles pack ice cream into Styrofoam tubs with dry ice on top, guaranteeing it arrives perfectly frozen at your door. Classic flavors are dulce de leche, bitter chocolate, and strawberry; more exotic choices are beer, grapefruit, and Russian cream (a white, creamy flavor that tastes like the Dude’s cocktail of choice in The Big Lebowski).

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This three-block-long indoor market is filled with antiques, junk, and secondhand clothes on one side; meat and cheese markets, bakeries, and vegetable stalls on the other. Pick up a couple of soft rolls and some cheese, house-cured salami, tomatoes, and alfajor cookies for dessert, then sit and picnic on a bench in the plaza just outside. Someone will inevitably roll by with a cart filled with thermoses of coffee—ask for a cortado dulce and you’ll get a tiny plastic cup with strong coffee and condensed milk.

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Classic Argentine pies like deep-dish mozzarella, fugazzetta (onion focaccia stuffed with mozzarella), and cancha (no cheese, eaten cold with ground chile, tomato, and oregano) are the specialties at this standing-room-only establishment. Argentine pizza is completely different from the Italian pies we Americans know, so be prepared for a new experience (it hardly ever comes with tomato sauce, and the thick crust resembles focaccia). Lean against the counter and watch groups of young people heading to the bars putting down a slice, businessmen on their way home for dinner splitting a beer before facing the wife and kids, people stopping to pick up pizzas for a night in with friends, and taxi drivers pausing between fares.

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