The quest for peanut butter… in Argentina

I love grocery stores. My first trip in a new country is always a delight, even when Im sick with a head cold, jet lagged, and haven’t slept in 2 days. I find it fascinating to see how this mundane activity translates in a country with different norms, seasons, agricultural practices, tastes, and budgets. I will eventually skip across chains, towns and do a proper inventory of which stores offer the best produce, dry goods, meats and seafood. And of course in some countries, the stores are specialized on old traditions and local markets of bakers and butchers.

In Argentina, it seems to be the blend of the old and new. With a population of 15M in Buenos Aires, there are a few mega market chains like Coto, Jumbo, and the imported Carrefour. But there are also lots of small butchers, bakers, pastry shops, coffee shops, and the medley of “Chinos” … small cornerstore Chinese-owned mini-markets that specialize in the freshest local produce. I suspect most of my time in the coming months will be spent exploring the latter.  

On our first day, with daylight quickly waning and most of our precious time spent waiting in line at the Cell phone store to get our local SIMs and data packages, we optimized for efficiency and hit the big chain Coto on our walk back “home”. It was a big store, similar to a standard grocery store back home. But nothing was familiar. Different products, different brands, different packaging (lots of cheap plastic bags).

It seems that groceries are subjected to the heavy import duties of up to 300%, which provides easy access to products within MercoSur (the trading block of Brazil, Argentina and a few other South American countries) but little else. The crippling inflation, currency devaluation and economic poverty translates into a grocery experience that is mostly commodities from local production. There are however four massive aisles of wine. 😃

For our first grocery we were vying for a simple formula. Coffee, bread, jam and peanut butter. A few oranges. Some bottled water. We could get by, get organized with our connectivity and have our first day of work with a trip to a nearby steakhouse (parilla) for more sustenance.

But we could not find the peanut butter. 🤷‍♀️ 

With a strong Italian heritage (66% of Argentinians have Italian ancestry), we found the Nutella. But the peanuts or “manis” and my friendly teddy bear on the ubiquitous Kraft label was nowhere to be found.

Turns out, this is the stuff of legend in Buenos Aires. The expat community screams out for these banal (for us) items that we take for granted: Kraft Peanut Butter and Philadelphia Cream Cheese and Twinnings Tea. There are internet threads and facebook posts that share sightings of the illusive products in isolated import stores, often hidden in Chinatown. Ive written down a few leads and will head out in the next few days to explore the city and see if I can track down the who, what, where and why. Not because I need my Kraft fix, but simply to understand how the system works.

Meanwhile, we found ourselves a natural version of unsalted ground peanuts, made locally. And it’s delicious! 

Welcome to Argentina!