El rincón cultural – What the hell is a confiteria?

Confitería/Panadería Argentina - a local chain

So, we all know about the well-documented parrillas and emapanada joints/pizzerias that dominate the eating culture here but there’s one other type of gastronomic locale in Buenos Aires that seems to dominate the eating establishment genre that, fortunately, doesn’t involve massive amounts of beef and/or insane amounts of cheese and fried meat/cheese pockets: this is the omnipresent confitería. Now, when I first began thinking about doing a post about this concept/locale I felt that I could define it pretty well. However, after scanning the web and, then, walking around my barrio for about 1/2 hour walking by about a dozen places that call themselves confiterías my initial thoughts are now not nearly as definitive as they once were.

In addition to a confitería and panadería this place is also a Café-Resto... which is like a sit-down coffee shop/restaurant type place.

Now, in looking up the word confitería in the dictionary the definition usually comes back as “Tea room”. Well, though in some of these you may be able to get tea, the idea of going to a confitería in order to drink tea seems laughable to me. Granted, “tea time” or something of the sort, here in Argentina, is more like a mid-morning or late afternoon snack to kill hunger between meals, but the concept, for me, of a “tea room” is more fancy and sit-down oriented. In practice, actually, most confiterías seem to almost always be paired with panaderías, which you may be able assume is a “bakery”, and may or may not have tables to sit and eat. What they all do sell, by and large, are homemade facturas (pastries), galletas (cookies), breads (hence the pan – bread)and other breaded-sugar snacks. I also read “confectionary” as a possible translation of this, which makes sense because my sense of a confectionary from the US is a store that sells sweets. However, the confectionaries I know (this term, actually, seems kind of dated nowadays) don’t sell pastries and aren’t really bakeries.  They’re more like homemade candy and chocolate stores, which confiterías mostly definitely are NOT.This all, still, leads me unable to make a good, accurate definition for the confitería.

In the end, however, I’d say a confitería really can best be just described as the pastry, cookie and sugary counterpart of the “bakery” while the panadería is more the “breads” side of the store. Some are sit down and serve snacks and drinks, some are just plain old bakeries. The one thing they are here in Buenos Aires, though, is COMMON and I challenge you to go more than a few blocks without encountering a local confitería/panadería combo for all of your carb and sugar infested dietary needs… or make that desires.

Prof Rabner