Uruguay

Uruguay shares Argentina's love of the grill, and the asado is national ritual, alongside the towering chivito steak sandwich. Beef, Italian-influenced pasta, dulce de leche, and endless mate shape a meat-loving table.

The chivito was invented at El Mejillon in Punta del Este in the mid-1940s and only reached Montevideo in 1949, so the capital adopted it rather than produced it. It comes two ways: al pan, in a roll, and al plato, deconstructed onto a plate with chips and salads, and the beef inside is a thin steak rather than the goat the name suggests.

Uruguay eats more beef per head than almost anywhere, roughly fifty kilos a person a year, and exports about three quarters of what it produces. The grill it goes on is a parrilla with an adjustable brasero at the side, where wood burns down to embers that are raked under the grate as needed, so the cook controls heat by moving coals rather than the meat.

Golden discs of fried dough with a slit in the middle, crisp-edged and pillowy, the treat Uruguayans make whenever it rains, dusted with sugar and dunked in mate.