Barrio Chino (Chinatown)

Buenos Aires' Barrio Chino is a compact but vibrant Chinatown in the Belgrano neighbourhood — a two-block stretch of Asian supermarkets, restaurants, and shops that reflects the city's small but growing East Asian community and serves as the best place in Buenos Aires to eat dumplings, ramen, and dim sum. The neighbourhood is centred on Arribeños Street between Juramento and Olazábal, marked by a traditional Chinese gate (paifang) at the entrance.

The food is the draw — the Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean, and Japanese restaurants packed into these two blocks represent the best Asian food in a city that is otherwise dominated by Italian-Argentine cuisine. The supermarkets stock ingredients that are impossible to find elsewhere in Buenos Aires — fresh tofu, specialty soy sauces, rice vinegars, and the particular vegetables that Chinese and Korean cooking require — and browsing them is an education in culinary traditions that Argentina's European-immigrant culture largely missed.

Barrio Chino is busiest on weekends and during Chinese New Year, when the gate area fills with lion dancers, firecrackers, and the kind of celebratory chaos that Buenos Aires' Asian community rarely displays in other parts of the city. The neighbourhood is small enough to walk in 20 minutes but interesting enough to spend an hour eating and exploring. It sits near the Belgrano train station and is easily combined with a visit to the nearby Barrancas de Belgrano park.