8 Buenos Aires bars preserving Argentina’s golden age

Jun 14, 2024

Bar Británico sits on a prime corner of San Telmo, sharing the historic neighborhood with stately mansions lining old, low-slung streets. Just across the road, a monument marks the spot where a Spanish expedition founded the city in 1536. Inside, the ambiance is mellow, the light sepia-tinted, with a checkerboard-patterned floor, well-spaced wooden tables and a dimly lit bar twinkling with bottles of local vermouths and liqueurs. A fan turns slowly so as not to disturb the regulars reading their daily newspapers.

When I lived here, from 1991 to 2001, I would drop in for a ham-and-cheese toastie or a bowl of lentil stew in winter, a discreet nod from the waiter and a window seat. Now, on return visits to Buenos Aires, I always begin my stay with a cortado at the Británico. It’s not because I’m English, a “Británico,” but because the place feels like a second home. In a city prone to razing and redevelopment, the beauty of things that don’t change is enhanced by their scarcity.

Bar Británico’s character has granted it status from the city as one of 80-odd “bares notables.” These bars and cafes — the words are interchangeable here — possess a certain antiquated charm. Several opened in the 19th century, making them ancient in a nation that only gained independence in 1816. You can identify them by common decor: zinc bar-tops, tiled floors, soccer or tango memorabilia, and signage that uses a local curlicued typeface called fileteado.

Sports, musical and literary legends sipped their espressos and vermouths at some “notables.” Argentina’s most celebrated author, Jorge Luis Borges, talked books and sketched out stories with fellow writer Adolfo Bioy Casares at La Biela, a Parisian-style terrace cafe in upmarket Recoleta. Bar Sur and El Boliche de Roberto are known for live tango shows, which can be enjoyed over empanadas and malbec. According to custom — at least in the days before bodyguards and bulletproof limos — presidents dropped into the Tortoni, the oldest and grandest of the cafes, every May 25, Revolution Day, for a breakfast of hot chocolate and churros.

I often use the “cafés notables” to plot walks and bus rides. The promise of a coffee and a medialuna (the sweet Argentine version of the croissant) is reason enough to explore beyond well-trodden touristy districts like Palermo and La Boca. Frankly, few outsiders would make the trip to the barrio of Devoto, on the western edge of the city, if it were not for the gorgeous Café de García.

In some countries, being a “listed” or heritage building signifies protection against modernization or closure and even maintenance grants. Not in Buenos Aires. The relevant edicts that apply to these establishments allude to tax breaks and promise “technical advice”; in return proprietors commit to not modifying the exterior, interior, “essence or identity” of their bar or cafe.

“Being ‘notable’ basically means the Ministry of Culture spreads the word about you,” says Carlos Cantini, who has been writing an in-depth Spanish blog about Buenos Aires’s cafe culture for a decade. “But it doesn’t come with any kind of practical support. Dozens of ‘notables’ have closed, been demolished or refurbished. As for obtaining funds or loans, there’s simply no access to credit in Argentina.”

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The stately Café Richmond — where Graham Greene enjoyed a gin or two, and Anglo-Argentine hacks at the Buenos Aires Herald knew they could get a good cup of tea — closed in 2011. La Flor de Barracas, Clásica y Moderna and the martini bar of the Hotel Castelar are more recent high-profile closures. Even the beloved Británico was threatened in 2006, when the building’s owner decided to sell, but locals organized petitions, protests and social media to drum up support.

The pandemic led to further extinctions of “notables” and many humbler local cafes. Buenos Aires’s residents, known as porteños, are notorious for adopting European and U.S. fashions. The thirst for so-called “third wave” coffee shops — contemporary-styled places with expert baristas, almond milk and vegan cakes — has altered the market.

On the upside, there have been significant reopenings and refits. Over the last two decades, a family firm calling itself Notables acquired five old bars that were closed or at risk of closure. They redecorated them with old-school fixtures and fittings, while offering menus of substantial fare. Going from Café Margot to Bar El Federal and then on to the Bar de Cao can induce mild déjà vu, as the interiors are quite similar. But beautiful spaces have been conserved, and five neighborhoods have retained their cherished coffeehouses.

“I always liked repairing things when I was a young man, from bicycles to furniture or old cars,” Notables director Pablo Durán says. “I bought a cafe with my dad when I was 20 and ever since I’ve had a passion for them.”

Owning a small chain, he says, helped the family weather the shutdowns imposed by covid-19. “If we’d had only one outlet, we’d have been much more vulnerable during the pandemic. We shared a kitchen, menus and prices, and a takeaway service allowed us to survive.”

Old watering holes matter to people. As Cantini says, “The ‘notables’ are living witnesses to the fact the world recognizes Buenos Aires as a cafe city. These old cafes speak to their neighborhoods and to wider history.” Gentrification and redevelopment in Buenos Aires are largely unregulated. A moody old bar-cafe is like a reassuring old friend, and an invitation to visitors and porteños alike to remember this city once had a tango-soundtracked belle époque.

In his 1995 book “Cafes of Buenos Aires — A Report on Nostalgia,” historian Jorge Bossio writes, “First comes the tavern or inn, and then the café, where the conquistador reduces his life to conversations that help him overcome the solitude of America and the longing for Europe.” That’s a very Argentine poetic flight — just the sort of rumination that comes to writers when seated beside the windows of old cafes.

But it wasn’t only “conquistadors.” Like New York, Buenos Aires was a preeminent city of inward migration in the second half of the 19th century; its bars and cafes gave all who came a warm welcome, a decent espresso and a place to meet people or be alone, together. They still deliver that service.

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The city has many Italian and Spanish-style bars, but this is one of the few surviving joints with British connections. Railway workers arrived from England and Scotland in the 1850s, and Britain was a major investor in the meat trade. Británico’s name honors a group of British World War I veterans who lived in a nearby “pensión.” Ironically, during the 1982 Falklands War, the bar was temporarily renamed El Tánico (The Italian). Author Ernesto Sabato is said to have written parts of his magnum opus, “On Heroes and Tombs,” at the bar; the novel’s opening scene takes place in the park across the street that contains the monument to Pedro de Mendoza, first (and doomed) founder of Buenos Aires.

This lovely cafe in the Notables group is still recognizable as an “almacén,” or general store, with the old cabinets once used for jars of oil and pickles now stocking wines from Mendoza province. A lot of neighborhood bars started life as meeting places for working-class residents, newly settled foreign workers and even deracinated gauchos. The menu features Buenos Aires standards including milanesa (schnitzel) with fries, picadas (platters of cheeses and cured meats) and all manner of pasta dishes.

Opened in 1893, this humble-looking bar has turned itself into an important platform for emerging young tango musicians and singers. The walls are a riot of old paintings and dusty soda siphons, with chessboards available for the quiet afternoon hours.

Firmly on the tourist circuit, this grand establishment is nonetheless worth a visit. The Tortoni opened in 1858 and moved to its present address, on Buenos Aires’s most French-looking boulevard, Avenida de Mayo, in 1880. The interior is a rococo whirl of marble-top tables, gilt-framed mirrors, dark wood panels and Tiffany glass ceilings. The National Tango Academy and tango museum are on the floor above the cafe, which hosts gigs in the basement.

Singer-songwriter Acho Estol says he discovered the Tortoni in the ’90s, when he was into rock music.

“I’d always imagined it to be a dusty old place, stuck in the past,” he said. “But I put my prejudices to one side and saw performances by some of the great maestros performed — old ‘tangueros’ like Horacio Salgán and Osvaldo Pugliese — and met younger musicians, journalists and tango historians.”

He later played there with his own band, La Chicana.

“The Tortoni is the closest thing in my life to a tango university. Every time I pass by, I drop in to have at least a ‘café solo.’ The waiters are young and the clientele is mainly tourists. Now I’m the old ‘tanguero.’”

Opened in 1912, La Ideal is a refuge of elegance and calm composure in the heaving, polluted downtown district. It reopened in 2022 after a six-year refurbishment of its sumptuous interiors, which includes French chandeliers, stained-glass windows, cedar boiserie and gold leaf-work. La Ideal has been used in several tango-themed films and regularly hosts “milongas” — dance lessons and practice sessions open to the public.

On one of Buenos Aires’s most desirable corners, the prosaic name of La Biela — “connecting rod” — alludes to the many past customers involved in motor racing. Popular with well-heeled residents of Recoleta, La Biela does steak sandwiches and “French croissants.” The terrace is shaded by a huge, long-limbed rubber fig tree, much prized during Buenos Aires’s sultry summers.

In La Boca close to the old port, this basic-looking bar, popular with working-class locals, opened in 1905 just a week after the local football club, Boca Juniors, was founded. As well as coffee, beers and “cañas” (local firewaters), it serves food, including “parrilladas” — grilled meat with sausages and offal.

Just a block away from the Plaza de Mayo, Argentina’s political nerve-center, La Puerto Rico is on Calle Alsina, one of the oldest streets in the city. The cafe opened in 1887, and a recent makeover has conserved the pared-down decor. The new owners have kept up the tradition of toasting coffee beans on-site. As in a lot of the old cafes, the menu features a range of “facturas” (pastries) with curious local names like “vigilante,” which resemble police batons, and “librito,” or “little book,” after the layered phyllo dough.

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