Buenos Aires

By Rodney Bolt

Buenos Aires is often billed as the Paris of the South, and it certainly has the appropriate sophistication, the fin-de-siècle grace, and the couture.

But the real magic of the city lies in something essentially Latin. Trying to discover just what that something is can be the most fascinating part of a visit. Marlene Dietrich came close when she said: "Latinos are tenderly enthusiastic. In Brazil they throw flowers at you. In Argentina they throw themselves."

"We don't have a middle road," agrees one young porteño (a person from Buenos Aires). "We love or we hate."

The rooms at Legado Mitíco, my hotel in the Palermo Viejo district, were named after revered Argentines – the mystical writer Jorge Luis Borges, tango star Carlos Gardel, Evita Perón, of course, as well as a couple of military heroes, and even the comic-strip character Mafalda (an acerbic six year-old). Curiously, though, no Maradona. Perhaps the footballer didn't quite fit the hotel's stylish image, or maybe the omission was out of sensitivity to English guests' feelings.

Legado Mitíco is just a few yards from the house where Borges grew up, right at the spot that, in a poem called Buenos Aires, he imagines to be the site of the mythical foundation of the city. In his day (he died in 1986), Palermo Viejo was a shabby outer suburb, inhabited by knife-wielding gauchos and bandits who drank hard and fought in the taverns. Today, with its leafy, cobbled streets and buildings bedecked with decorative stucco, the quarter is filled with hip bars, designer boutiques and restaurants such as the traditional Don Julio, famed for its grills, and La Cabrera, currently hot-tipped as best in town for beef, where queues of chic porteños form nightly.

But El Preferido de Palermo, though not the rowdy tavern Borges wrote about, preserves something of the old atmosphere. An almacen – a store doubling as a restaurant – it has been going strong since the Fifties. Cans of peas, tomatoes and artichokes stand on shelves, alongside jars of olives, pickles and peppers. After 10pm, as tourists go home and porteños come out for dinner, the bar stools at tall counters fill up, the television is turned to football, and flagons of wine and mounds of food appear.

Borges's favoured hang-out, Café Tortoni in the city centre, is much the same as he would have remembered it – dimly lit, even at noon, with stone-tiled floors, dark panelling, marble-topped tables and oxblood leather upholstery. Nowadays, tourists flock through taking flash photos, but there are plenty of historic bars around town – such as El Federal in San Telmo – that are not guided-tour stop-offs. It was in such a café, as men sat reading newspapers over endless cups of coffee and friends chattily munched through between-meal empanadas, that I met Augustín Rabinovich.

A scheme called "Argentine Idiosyncrasy" puts visitors in touch with an informed local – not a PR plant or tour guide, but a real porteño for a chat about Argentina. Augustín, a young banker from the fashionable northern suburb of San Isidro, was my contact. For an hour and a half we talked tango and opera, touched on the Argentine passion for football – and on Argentine passion in general.

On how people like Maradona, Carlos Gardel and former President Juan Perón achieve godlike status. On the combined weight of history and nostalgia.

Gradually, Augustín parted the impenetrable thicket of Argentine politics, revealing that the name Perón can still fiercely polarise debate. I never have been able quite to work out whether Evita Perón was a goody or a baddy, and it was somewhat gratifying to learn that the jury was still out. (Later, I would visit the Museo Evita, a fascinating paean to her life and, with an excellent restaurant in the courtyard, very much the realm of smartly dressed Ladies who Lunch.)

Our discussion came up to date as Augustín explained the background of an impending transport strike, stemming from a clash a few days before that had resulted in a shoot-out between unions – an example, he said, of the Argentine flair for the dramatic.

"Actually, Mafalda says it all," remarked Augustín. "With its pessimism, passion, drama, the cartoon strip is an accurate depiction of Argentine life. There's a scene where Mafalda reminds her friend Felipe that it's 4.30pm, and he should go home to do his homework. 'There's time,' says Felipe. Same at 5.50pm. Then she tells him it's 7.20pm, and suddenly it's 'No! Already? Now what? The sums, the essay… what can I do…'."

In the street, this taste for drama can become a sense of theatre. Along Caminito, a street in the tough La Boca neighbourhood, houses are painted in bright pinks, yellows, blues – a heritage of the time when poor porteños begged paint off ships for their houses, but today a backdrop to couples dancing tango outside restaurants, as the strains of Carlos Gardel seem curiously to blend in the air with the aroma of grilling beef.

I've felt a similar sense of pavement-as-stage in Italy – and perhaps this touch of drama comes from the Italian strand in the tangle of national ancestries that makes up Argentina. You're just as likely to meet a Stein as a Santos, a Menendez as a Pallastrini.

"I really missed that mix," a friend, Roberto, who had just returned after 12 years in Europe, told me. "There, everything was separate. Here, we've pulled it all together, but kept the elements."

Nothing expresses that mix – and the drama – more eloquently than tango, the sensuous dance and music that draws together influences from Africa, as well as eastern and western Europe. The Real Tango Company is a mother-and-daughter team that takes you not to the touristy tango salons (though those can be fun), but to neighbourhood milongas – dance get-togethers held in different venues at set times each week. "That tango you see in commercial places is 'show tango'," said Florencia Costigliolo, daughter of the team. "It's a distinct style, but what we call 'tango for export'." Milonga tango is more intimate, very different. No arched backs and dramatic flailing of limbs, but quieter, in extraordinarily close embrace.

First, a dance lesson. In a large, mirrored room, in a genteelly declining fin-de-siècle building, dance teacher Evi put me through the paces on the parquet, to prepare me, should I want to join in later. (I was far too timid.) Then it was off to a 5pm milonga at a social centre in San Telmo. "There are milongas at all times of day," said Florencia. "Once, you heard about them by word of mouth, but these days people email or text to tell you."

A taxi driver might pull over for a quick dance, if he knows he's near a good milonga. People drop in during their lunch hour, or after work – women slipping off day shoes and taking glitzy stilettos out of a carry bag. It's perfectly acceptable for complete strangers to dance, for married partners to attend without each other (a strict decorum and age-old code governs all). It's the dancing that matters.

"Nineteen-year-old girls can be all of a flutter if a good dancer walks in," said Florencia. "And they will be desperate to be asked to dance – even if he is 70. With a really good dancer, it is like being in love for three minutes." A couple glides past, chest-to-chest. The woman's eyes are closed, her nose on her dance partner's cheek, her arm draped softly around the back of his neck. At a pause in the music, she slowly lifts one heel in the air, waits – and lowers it again.

And I think that there is something in that embrace akin to how I feel each time I'm in Buenos Aires – that Marlene Dietrich was right. The city enfolds you.

Getting there

Aerolineas Argentinas (020 7290 7887; www.aerolineas.com.ar) flies daily from Gatwick to Buenos Aires Ezeiza Airport via Madrid, from £700 return. Travelling on an international flight with the airline qualifies you for a Visit Argentina pass, which gives discounts on internal flights.

Packages

Tailor Made Travel (0845 456 8050; www.tailor-made.co.uk) can arrange a trip to Buenos Aires from £1,999 per person until October 31. The cost includes international flights with Aerolineas Argentinas, four nights at the Hotel Legado Mitico with continental breakfast, a tango lesson and visit to a milonga, the option to participate in Argentine Idiosyncrasy, and a half-day tour including La Boca, as well as return private transfers from the airport to the hotel and all prepayable taxes.

You can visit Buenos Aires as part of a 13-day Best of Argentina with Rio de Janeiro tour offered by Titan HiTours (0800 988 5858; www.titanhitours.co.uk). Prices start from £3,395 per person, including direct flights from London, internal flights, VIP Home Departure Service, transfers, selected meals, the services of a tour manager and excursions.

Getting around

It is safer to ask your hotel or restaurant to phone for a radio-taxi or remise (private cab), or to pick up a taxi from an official rank, than it is to hail one in the street. Buenos Aires has a cheap, efficient, though frequently very busy, metro (Subte) network. The bus service is more esoteric, but the booklet Guia “T” (available at news kiosks) will help you decipher routes and numbers.

When to go

Spring, when the jacaranda trees break into spectacular mauve blossom, and autumn are the loveliest times to visit. Midsummer (January and February) can be humid, and the La Sudestada southerly winds can bring drenching downpours in the winter months of June to October.

Further information at www.bue.gov.ar; in Buenos Aires call Freephone 0800 555 0016.

The inside track

Teatro Colón (Cerrito 618; 0054 11 4378 7100; www.teatrocolon.org.ar), the city’s magnificent fin-de-siècle opera house, has just emerged from a massive renovation. It’s worth a visit, whatever is on.

The ornate mausoleums, pantheons and cenotaphs at the 19th-century cemetery in Recoleta (Junín 1760) are lined up in avenues and alleyways, like an extraordinarily grand, though eerily silent, village. Families spend fortunes on building and maintaining the tombs. Many Argentine grandees are entombed here, among them Evita Perón.

Have dinner at a puerta cerrada – a dinner-party-style restaurant, often with a superb cook behind the scenes. Two of the best can be tracked down via www.diegofelix.com and www.casasaltshaker.com. The addresses and details are given to you when you book.

If the touristy nature of Café Tortoni dismays you a little, visit lesser-known Borges and bohemian hang-outs from the past, at Café Richmond (Florida 468); Hotel Castelar (Avenida de Mayo 1152), where the Spanish poet and playwright Federico García Lorca stayed, and still with a Turkish hamam in the basement; or El Histórico restaurant at La Sociedad Argentina de Escritores (Argentine Society of Writers, México 524), where Borges gave many readings.

For the inside track on those unspoken tango codes of conduct and tips on the hottest milongas visit www.therealtango.com.ar and www.lamilongaargentina.com.ar.

What to take home

Pick up a couple of bottles of first-rate Malbec (the local red wine of choice), or explore other excellent Argentine wines from the comprehensive range at Ruffino (Chacabuco 691, San Telmo; 11 4362 5292; www.ruffino.com.ar). Local leather goods are inexpensive and stylish. Try Casa Lopez (Marcelo T de Alvear; 11 4311 3044; www.casalopez.com.ar).

The best hotels

Che Lulu £
Delightful little boutique hotel in a house in Palermo, with just six rooms, each decorated in a different style (Emilio Zolá 5185, Palermo Soho; 0054 11 4772 0289; www.chelulu.com; doubles from £27 per night).

Mansión Vitraux ££
Hip designer hotel in a large house in the heart of hot-and-happening San Telmo. Rooms have differing décor, from chic to consciously gaudy. There’s a good restaurant with a particularly well-chosen range of wines (Carlos Calvo 369, San Telmo; 11 4300 6886; www.mansionvitraux.com; doubles from £83 per night).

Legado Mitíco £££
A gem of a city hotel, set in an elegant house in leafy Palermo, close to all manner of bars and restaurants, with a staff that is genuinely friendly and exceptionally helpful. Rooms are named after (and have décor inspired by) such Argentine icons as Evita, Borges and Carlos Gardel. But this is not at all clunky – it’s done with imagination and taste. There’s a garden courtyard, and a spacious, comfortable sitting-room, great for flopping out at the end of a busy day. The magnificent breakfast includes such delights as ginger-and-basil lemonade and scrumptious home-made empanadas and cakes (Gurruchaga 1848, Palermo Soho; 11 4833 1300; www.legadomitico.com; doubles from £146 per night).

The best restaurants

Museo Evita Restaurante £
Great courtyard venue for lunch. Inspired chef Ramiro Solís comes up with such dishes as chicken, apple and fig risotto. Around £10 a head (Juan María Gutiérrez 3926, Palermo. 11 4800 1599; www.museoevitaresto.com).

Don Julio ££
Traditional parrilla (grill house) renowned for its excellent steaks. They come unadorned and unaccompanied, as if sauce would be a defilement. Around £16 per head (Cnr Guatemala and Gurruchaga, Palermo Viejo; 11 4831 9564).

El Preferido de Palermo ££
Old-fashioned grocery store atmosphere. Tapas and fuller meals served at counter tables; there’s a more conventional restaurant extension next door. Around £15 per head (Cnr Jorge Luis Borges and Guatemala, Palermo Viejo; 11 4773 3589).

La Cabrera £££
Currently the hottest spot for grills in town, especially popular for the gigantic mollejitas (sweetbreads), cooked chorizo and Kobe-style beef. Reservations essential. Around £22 per head (Cnr Cabrera and Thames, Palermo Viejo; 11 4831 7002; www.parrillalacabrera.com.ar). Telegraph