Buenos Aires keeps the tradition in cafes

On Saturday nights in Buenos Aires, the Miramar cafe crackles with the energy of local families, famished tango dancers and gregarious waiters delivering plates of crisp-skinned sardines, shrimp and fresh oysters.

Miramar is in San Cristóbal, a neighborhood in this Argentine city known for its tango dance halls but otherwise off the tourist track. Local diners come to share generous servings of oxtail soup, rabbit hunter-style or chorizo-laced Spanish frittata. Even with a couple of bottles of wine and mineral water, the feast seldom tops the equivalent of $15 a person.

Still owned by the Ramos family, its founders, the Miramar began in 1948 as an almacen, or bulk-goods grocer, and its endurance qualifies it for the city's recognized list of cafes — or " bares notables." In 1998, Buenos Aires legislated this official designation for bars, cafes, billiard halls and confectionaries whose antiquity, architecture or historical significance make them worthy of note and of preservation efforts.

The annually expanding list (now more than 50) includes some magnificent and famous cafes, such as Las Violetas and Tortoni with their beveled mirrors and polished-wood bars — cathedrals where tourists gather to worship legends like Carlos Gardel, a tango crooner who died in a 1935 plane crash and "every day sings a little better," it is said. But other "bares notables" are humbler, and it is there, amid the worn interiors like that of the Miramar, that you can find the traditional menus designed to please Argentines, whose melting-pot cuisine has a marked Italian influence. The food is home-cooked good, abundant and, with the favorable dollar-to-peso exchange rate, inexpensive.

From hipsters to workers

Like the Miramar, El Preferido de Palermo, in the Palermo neighborhood, opened as an grocery in 1952, when its founder, Arturo Fernandez, arrived from the province of Asturias on Spain's lush north coast. The grocery, with shelves of canned eel, olives and good wines, remains, sharing tight space with trendy orange-and-green tables where a limited menu is served to Palermo's young and hip.

A photo of Francis Ford Coppola graces the counter, but the barrio's real luminary, Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges (the street bears his name), lived across the way from 1901 to 1914. A wider menu is served in the connecting main restaurant, warm with red-and-white tablecloths and wrought-iron chandeliers. A must-try is the "fabada asturiana" (30 pesos for two people, or about $7.75), a time-honored recipe known to call for "ear of pig." El Preferido's version (no ear) is a steamy casserole of creamy-textured favas tossed with morcilla (blood sausage), fresh pork, pancetta and chorizo.

San Telmo, the oldest part of Buenos Aires, boasts seven "bares notables," including a bohemian haunt called Britanico, a prime scene in Tomas Eloy Martinez's novel "The Tango Singer." Most cater to young customers looking for hamburgers and fries. But the most rundown and least self-aware, La Coruña, which clings to a corner of the San Telmo market, is where you'll find the uncompromising grub that feeds local laborers: lentil stew, sardines, hake fillet, liver and onions, vegetable omelet, kidneys a la Provençale — all between a few dollars.

Carmen Moreira, daughter of the family that has owned the cafe since 1961, sets the food on milk-glass plates before customers sharing the long tables. It's straightforward unadorned cuisine but an experience to savor, like the magical realism of a Borges story, from many angles.

Worth the taxi ride

It's about 30 minutes by taxi from downtown Buenos Aires to the pretty, tranquil barrio of Villa Devoto. But make the trip for the broad-canopied rosewood trees shading the avenues and for the gargantuan picada (56 pesos per person) at Cafe de Garcia, opened in 1937. A food saga told in about 30 items — from garlicky beans to herbed meatballs and fish — the picada is a kind of gastronomical parade of small dishes, paid for in one overall price.

Take in the scene as you wait for your dinner. A Boca Juniors T-shirt signed by soccer star Diego Maradona joins accordions, cue sticks, wineskins, firearms and numerous vintage items on shelves and yellowed walls. Mineral water comes in old-fashioned soda siphon bottles. "You choose the drink, I take care of the rest," Ruben Garcia instructs first-time customers as he skirts billiard tables.