Why Buenos Aires' cafes make you feel like you're in Paris

Buenos Aires has always been considered Latin America's most European city.Credit: iStock

Inside the splendour of Cafe Las Violetas on an early Sunday morning in a momentarily subdued Buenos Aires, a middle-aged male waiter, clad in traditional black and white, patrols the mostly empty tables occupied by the occasional aged newspaper-absorbed and cortado-clutching regular.

Distinguished by its curved glass doors, marbled doric columns, ornate ceilings, lavish stained-glass features and a chequerboard-tiled floor complementing the waiter's uniform, this could easily be Paris, if not for the absence of burning bins and overturned cars on the street outside.

Then again, it's no coincidence that Violetas should feel so unmistakably Continental. Buenos Aires, after all, has always been considered Latin America's most European city, albeit a crumbling, faded version of one.

Illustration: Jamie Brown

On reflection, as I savour the calm inside the cafe before more tourists like me descend, Violetas, is more reminiscent of a grand Budapest coffee palace like the equally exquisite, late 19th-century New York Cafe designed in a florid Italian Renaissance-style.

At Violetas my decent enough cappuccino (better than any Parisian equivalent though not a hard task) comes in a tall handled Irish coffee-like glass with my "croissant de jamon y queso" thoughtfully sliced into four bite-sized pieces.

I'm here as much to savour Buenos Aires' past as I am for a breakfast repast. One of the most remarkable aspects of Cafe Las Violetas is that it is by no means unique: it is one of six dozen or so such heritage-listed cafes and bars scattered across the Argentine capital.

Each of these atmospheric establishments have been recognised by an enlightened City of Buenos Aires for their importance to the cultural fabric of this captivating city, a place where rapacious modernity has never fully established itself due to the notoriously anaemic Argentine economy.

Many of these bares notables, as they're known, were haunts of leading Buenos Aires' cultural figures such as the writer Jorges Luis Borges and singer Carlos Gardel.

Perhaps the most famous bares notable, and the one most frequented by tourists who usually must queue outside for a table, is Cafe Tortoni, even grander than Violetas and named after a Parisian coffeehouse of the same name. It dates to 1858.

Or head across town to the moody, more intimate Bar El Federal in lively San Telmo, the city's oldest barrio or neighbourhood.

Every spare space on the walls inside the old world El Federal is festooned with images of tango musicians and singers while the bar is dominated by a flamboyant timber arch filled with stained glass and a clock that no longer ticks nor tocks.

It occupies an unkempt two-storey former liquor shop, the patina of which appears to have last been the beneficiary of a coat of paint when Juan and Eva Peron were in power in Argentina.

Then over in Recoleta, site of an extraordinary labyrinthine cemetery lined with the ostentatious tombs of the city's elite, is another bares notable well worth a visit, namely La Biela, a shrine to Argentina's rich motor racing heritage.

Before entering, customers are greeted by a life-sized statue of an overalled Oscar "The Eagle" Galvez, a national motor racing hero, the inspiration of the more internationally famous Juan Manuel Fangio.

But, as tempting as it may be, there's no time to linger too long at any of these irresistible bares notables, as by my estimation, there are still about 66 or so left for me to visit.