''WE have meat, meat or meat,'' cried the host at my first lunch in Buenos Aires, jovially waving a copy of the menu in the air.
I said I would take the meat, and surveyed the vast steak which overlapped the plate in front of me. After that, the afternoon siesta was blissfully welcome.
A couple of nights later, another friend took me to one of the popular barbecue restaurants in the city centre, where a chef stands just inside the front window tending what appears to be a campfire, and where great sides of meat hang from a metal ring, cooking gently.
We ordered what was described as ''a selection for two'' and, for US$22, were presented with what looked like a medieval banquet: a huge sizzling trestle stacked with cuts of beef, pork, veal, goat, chicken, liver and kidneys.
A day or so later, on a farm a hundred kilometres or so from Buenos Aires, the farmer had laid on a modest barbecue lunch.
We had a fat Argentinian sausage, pungent and smoky, and lamb loin rolled with garlic and herbs. There was a great sheet of beef ribs, and then a rueful groan went up as the farmer's son dragged in a whole side of pork from the glowing fire outside.