Dining@Large: With a bang... - Baltimore restaurants: The dish on the restaurant scene, memorable meals, dining trends and more

I would put New Year's Eve in Buenos Aires in the mildly interesting category. After dinner at the stroke of midnight, people surged out of the restaurant and the city exploded. Or at least that's what it sounded like. In the States we're used to contained fireworks, but here there were official and unofficial explosions everywhere.

On the other hand, on the walk back to the hotel, I was struck by how eerily deserted the streets were. Some people, but not as many as you might expect, were standing in the doorways to look at the fireworks and one father was playing with sparklers with his kids, but mostly very few folks were out and about. Maybe in an area with a lot of bars, it would have been different.

Here was our menu last night. Dinner included all the champagne, wine and agua sin gas you could drink, and entertainment -- a singer. You can see from the photo that there were two figs on my plate and a pound of prosciutto for the appetizer. Also, in reading the menu, note that in Argentina, entrees are appetizers.

I also had the lamb and the pear tart, which were poor choices I decided after I tasted my tablemates' food. Naturally there were no vegetables involved in the meal except some diced ones in one of the pastas. ...