Foods the Argentinians love:-

1. Beef - of all types, from nose to tail, cooked in all sorts of ways. I have eaten steak (rump, sirloin, fillet, frying), ribs, black pudding, intestine, kidneys, sausage, tail meat, thyroid gland and probably a whole lot of other beef I can't remember or didn't recognise as beef at the time. An asado or parilla is the name for a traditional barbeque where you'll be in trouble if you're vegetarian. A restaurant which serves parilla is called a parillada. A steak sandwich is called a lomo and you get whole cafes and takewawys devoted to them - lomoterias.

2. Meat in general. As mentioned, there's not much on offer if you're vegetarian in Argentina (not that I am thankfully). They don't seem to understand the concept, although some restaurants have at least tried, putting a 'vegetarian section' in their menus. Unfortunately though, you're fairly likely to find that it lists 'chicken salad' or 'ham salad' rather than anything without any actual meat in it. I think their concept of 'meat' is red meat, so anything that doesn't have red meat in it must be vegetarian, 'cos chicken & pork clearly don't count do they!

3. Mate. This is a type of tea beloved of Argentinians. It's common to see people walking along the street with a thermos flask under one arm. This contains hot water for the mate. Yerba mate leaves are put into a special type of mug (usually leather bound) and mixed with hot water. The leaves float on the surface of the tea however, so it's drunk through a straw/spoon made of metal which comes with the mug. The mugs and straws are sold in shops all over the country and Argentinians can be seen walking along the streets, sitting outside their shops, on their lunchbreak, at work, on the beach, basically all day every day, sucking down a fresh mug of yerba mate.

4. Sandwiches. A 'miga' sandwich is made with white bread, usually triple decker and filled with ham and cheese. It's the type of sandwich most easily available in cafes. The crusts are always cut off (which is a shame as the crusts are my favourite bit) and although they're triple decker, the slices of bread are so thin you wouldn't realise there were three unless you checked. I was unfortunate enough to be shown a video of the manufacture of miga sandwiches on a very long bus ride from Bariloche to Mar del Plata (well, it beats a Sylvester Stallone triple bill which I had to endure on another bus journey) so I know that they use really big A3 slices of bread which they then chop up into normal sized sandwiches.

5. Pizza and Pasta - ubiquitous. Sometimes it's been hard to find some proper Argentinan food because there are so many Italian places. There are a lot of Italian descendants here so I guess that's probably why. The same goes for Chile also.

6. Milanesas - chicken, beef or veal in breadcrumbs either in a sandwich or with fries and vegetables (if you're lucky). A milanesa completa is a milanesa in a bread roll with ham, cheese, lettuce and fried egg with fries (although the fries, unlike everything else, aren't in the bread roll). Likewise for a lomo or hamburgesa completa.

7. Dulce de leche - this is used in copious amounts in all South American countries but in Argentina it borders on a national obsession. It's like a cross between caramel and condensed milk. They use it on bread and toast, on deserts of all kinds, on pancakes and cakes and in ice cream. It is ridiculously sweet and sugary but very nice so long as you don't overdo it.

8. Alfajores. These are big chocolate biscuits made essentially of 2 or 3 normal sized chocolate biscuits sandwiched together with dulce de leche and covered in more chocolate. Calorie overload basically. I have been given these for breakfast on more than one bus journey in South America. Being woken up at 8am to be given an alfajore, a bar of chocolate, a packet of Rocklets (Argentinian Smarties) and a small packet of melba toasts is not my idea of breakfast but obviously they think that's exactly what you want after 15-odd hours on a bus.

There's some useful pics and descriptions on Wikipedia here.