Uruguay's steak sandwich: thin grilled beef under ham, cheese, bacon, egg, olives, lettuce and tomato, built in a soft bun with a great deal of mayonnaise
Origin: Punta del Este & Uruguay
From the journey of Wheat.
A chivito contains no goat, which is the first thing anyone learns about it. The word means kid, and the standard account of the name is unusually specific: in 1946 at El Mejillón in Punta del Este, an Argentine customer from Córdoba asked for roast kid, which the kitchen did not have, and the owner Antonio Carbonaro sent out a hot beef sandwich instead as a stopgap. The customer approved, the name stuck, and the restaurant kept selling it. The story is told consistently, is attached to a named person, place, and year, and is generally accepted in Uruguay, though it rests on the restaurant's own account rather than on any contemporary document. What began as an emergency has become elaborate. The full sandwich carries thin grilled lomo, ham, melted cheese, bacon, a fried or hard-boiled egg, lettuce, tomato, olives, and often roasted pepper, with mayonnaise on both faces of the bun. Served on a plate with chips and salads rather than in a bun, it becomes a chivito al plato, which is a full dinner. The beef is the part that is easy to get wrong. It is a slice of tenderloin beaten thin and grilled for barely a minute a side on a very hot plate, so that it stays tender under everything else; a thick steak in a chivito makes the sandwich impossible to bite through, and Uruguayan cooks pound it deliberately. Uruguay eats more beef per head than almost anywhere on earth and the chivito is what that looks like at midnight. It is a late-night food, sold from carritos, roadside trailers, and it is the direct competitor of the Argentine lomito across the river, a rivalry conducted with the usual Río de la Plata seriousness.
Beat the beef thin, cook it fast, and melt the cheese onto it in the pan rather than under a grill. Lettuce goes directly on the bottom bun as a barrier. A soft bun is correct; a crusty roll fights the filling. There is no goat in it and no version with goat exists. Served on a plate with chips instead of in a bun it becomes a chivito al plato. It must be assembled and eaten immediately, which is why it is a food of trailers and counters rather than of kitchens.
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