Fruits of Land And Sea
Travel+Leisure India|November 2020
Uruguay’s beach scene is known as one of the best in South America. But the epicurean delights of its rich, ranch-filled interior and rolling wine country have, until now, been less explored. JOHN BOWE saddles up and tucks in.
JOHN BOWE
Fruits of Land And Sea

BY THE TIME I’d breezed through automated border control at Montevideo’s Carrasco Airport, received an earnest bro handshake from the rental-car guy, crossed town in rush-hour traffic in under 30 minutes, and devoured a plate of barbecue at the Mercado del Puerto, I remembered why I’ve always loved coming to Uruguay. There’s not a mellower, humbler, more reliably agreeable country in the world— nor one with better meat.

It was early December 2019, and I was back in Uruguay for the first time in over a decade. I’d justified my carnivorous meal by framing it as a litmus test. Had the menus changed at this cluster of parillas (restaurants specialising in steak, sausage, and organ meats, grilled over firewood and charcoal) in a former produce market in Montevideo? Had the stalwart, working-class feel of the place become prissy and boutique? Of all my childhood memories of Uruguay, the parilla was a cornerstone.

Seated at the counter, watching the grill-tenders flash arm and sometimes neck tattoos as they offered tastes of grilled provolone, I got my answer. If the formerly grass-fed cows were now slightly fattened with grain, everything else— from the serviceable cappuccino to the dazzling dulce de leche pancake—was exactly as I remembered it.

This story is from the November 2020 edition of Travel+Leisure India.

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This story is from the November 2020 edition of Travel+Leisure India.

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