We heard it put best when someone said that Uruguay food consists of, “Pizza, pasta and parrilla.”
Really, that’s pretty right on. Parrilla (Uruguayan barbeque) and Italian foods are quite common in Uruguay. However, there are a few local dishes that are also popular in Uruguay.
Chivitos are one popular Uruguay food. You can either get the Chivitos plate or the Chivitos al Pan. Typically, the Chivitos plate consists of layers of lomo (beef), ham, pancetta (bacon), mozzarella and fried egg. It’s usually served either on top of or with a plate of French fries, tomatoes, lettuce, potato salad, olives and some pickled red bell peppers.
The Chivitos al Pan is simply the layered lomo, ham, pancetta, mozzarella and fried egg between two pieces of bread. These sandwiches are usually huge and may or may not be served with French fries.
As far as Uruguay food goes, this is one of our favorite meals to order.
Another popular Uruguay food is the Milanesa. Again, this can either be served as a plate or al pan. A Milanesa is basically either a piece of chicken or beef, beaten very thin, breaded and then deep friend.
If you order the plate, it’ll usually come with a huge serving of fries, but you can also order it with mashed potatoes if you want. Sometimes it will also be slathered with ham and cheese, depending on where you order it.
The Milanesa al Pan is basically the same thing, but slapped between two pieces of bread. We typically have to take half of the Milanesa home because they are typically huge. Zoë loves Milanesas. They’re basically like huge chicken nuggets. Throw fries in with that and she’s a happy camper 🙂
Hamburgers are one type of food we expected to be universal. They do serve hamburgers in Uruguay, but they’re different than in the U.S..
How you ask?
I guess it just wouldn’t be a hamburger without ham. Well, if you order a hamburguesa completa (complete hamburger), you not only get the burger, ham and the bun, but you get mozzarella, a fried egg, pickled peppers, onions and more! Luckily you get to choose which toppings they put on.
Let’s loop back around to pasta now. You can get pretty much any type of pasta in Uruguay, but there are some interesting differences.
The first difference we noticed was that the pasta is made fresh at a lot of restaurants. I mean, when you place your order they make the pasta from scratch right then. It’s awesome. Not everywhere does it, but we love it when they do. I guess it helps cut back on food costs.
Another thing we noticed is that if you order lasagna, it will almost always have ham layered in!
We thought it was strange at first but ham seems to included with almost every type of Uruguay food, so I guess we shouldn’t have been surprised.
Another type of pasta that is very popular is gnocchi or, as you often see it spelled in Uruguay, noquis.
Actually, most restaurants (and even some of the grocery stores) serve gnocchi on the 29th of every month. Argentina also holds the same tradition. Apparently the reason it’s served every month on the 29th is because it is traditionally the day before payday, when most people are usually broke. And, gnocchi is a cheap and filling meal. It’s also really good.
Pizza is pretty self explanatory, but there are some differences from the average pizza in the US.
The pizza is typically all made fresh and oven baked. You can’t order thick crust or thin crust… it is what it is.
Not all pizza has cheese… the first pizza Brian tried didn’t have cheese. They don’t use a lot of sauce and some of the topping choices are different. And unfortunately, you won’t find a delicious by the slice joint like you would in New York, but overall it’s not bad.
Parrilla is, like we’ve said, Uruguayan barbeque. Although after thinking about it, I think it deserves a blog post all its own. More to come on that in a future Exploring Uruguay blog.
