The infamous "Xis" sandwiches from Porto Alegre

Porto Alegre, capital city from the state of Rio Grande do Sul.

Home of great food and gigantic appetites.

Oh I so much respect a culture with food in it. But I digress.

Xis is the name given to plate-sized sandwiches. It is pronounced "chees" as in cheeseburguer. And they are basically oversized cheese burguers - except it adds lettuce and instead of a burger it uses a full thin slice of beef. You add whatever you want - bacon, eggs, chicken breast, pork... oh infinite possibilities.

There is a small chain of restaurants, local to Porto Alegre called Cavanhas.

The photo below is from their own version of the Xis (which they name "Da casa")

Is it the best Xis in Porto Alegre? I can find 10 out of 5 gaúchos that will say otherwise, yeah, for each gaúcho that says yeah, there will be at least two that say no. Gaúchos take exceptional pride in having a better option to give. So I like that one, and this is my personal taste. When they offer me a better option, I will gladly review.

(I am not done with Porto Alegre food, let me remind you)

Sorry, I have no URL for this... But that is on purpose! (Alfajor Capitan Del Espacio)

So,

I was given these as gift back on my previous employment, by a great friend of mine from Argentina.

As you can obviously read, these are called Capitan Del Espacio. The ones in the picture are the best ones, triple layered dulce de leche filled, chocolate covered alfajores. You can eat it as it is, or as my friend told me, you can leave them on the fridge for a couple hours and they become crunchy. (I prefer at normal temperature, because I like dulce de leche a little more liquid).

It is such a dulce de leche overload (actually, sugar overload), that it gives that buzz... as if you get a spoonful of Nutella and drop it in your mouth (I can't say I never did that). And as Nutella, that stuff is good. oh yeah

Now that I got your curiosity...  The problem is... it is not sold in Buenos Aires! It is basically not sold anywhere popular.

According to my friend, it is made in Quilmes, a city close to Buenos Aires capital city. They do not want to make it too popular, which obviously as you can guess gave it that Streisand effect.

You can find it on the small window markets in the blocks of Quilmes. At least that's where I found it when I was there. You won't find it on the Carrefour groceries, or even at the corner candy shops that exist literally every corner of Downtown Buenos Aires Capital City. You have to track it by asking locals, even then, only a few will ever understand what the heck you are talking about.

Yeah, getting fat is easy. Getting fat with some style is not. ;)

AH just before posting this I found an old 2009 blog post (sorry, in Portuguese) which mentions Capitan Del Espacio and other alfajores. Quite nice read.