Part 21 of 25 World Cuisines to try. (1/3) Today’s Cuisine: #Uruguay When I put some research into #UruguayanCuisine, I was surprised to see that the national menu was somewhat limited. Uruguayan culture unsurprisingly had a large amount of Spanish and Italian influence and a bit of German influence in their desserts, but a large focus was placed on pizzas, pastas, empanadas, sandwiches and barbeque grilled meats called #asado. Asado is particularly popular in large part to eighty percent of the land in Uruguay being available for grazing livestock. Aside from Asado, one of the most popular dishes is the #Chivito, the #nationaldish of Uruguay. Though the term in Spanish translates to ‘little goat’, the #sandwich has no goat meat in it. The myth behind this sandwich is that an Argentine woman entered a restaurant in Uruguay asking for some goat meat like she had back home – but because the chef didn’t have any goat he tried to make a sandwich with any immediate ingredients available in his kitchen to hide the fact that he had no goat meat for her. The sandwich was a success and from that the Chivito sandwich was born. This sandwich is ridiculously complex - inside the two pieces of bread is a thin slice of #filetmignon with #mozzarella, black olives, #bacon, hardboiled egg slices, mayonnaise and #ham, and that’s usually just the base of the sandwich. The restaurant I went to, #Charrúa, had a couple variations of this sandwich to offer. I tried out the #ElCanadiense version, which had the same base ingredients, plus lettuce, tomato, roasted red peppers, caramelized onions and Canadian bacon. And if that wasn’t heavy enough, the sandwich is traditionally served with a side #FrenchFries. The sandwich was amazing and I could manage to taste most of what was packed into it, but it was also so rich it felt like a brick in my stomach after I finished eating it. #SouthAmericanCuisine #LowerEastSide #LES (at Charrua)