“Men would weep, priests would renounce their gods, children run crying to their mothers, but in Uruguay it is beloved, revered…” Anthony Bourdain, over sweeping classical music, introduces Uruguay’s national dish, the chivito.

For any true lover of sandwiches, there may well be weeping involved, but they will be tears of reverence and joy. This mighty sandwich, a shrine to carnivorous decadence, a scourge of arteries and vegetarians, is consumed in massive quantities daily throughout the country but particularly in the capital, Montevideo and nearby Punte del Este, where it originated.

One evening in 1940, Marcelo Gallardo, owner of a small beachfront restaurant called El Mejillon, faced with a request for a dish he didn’t have, did what any good chef would do – he winged it. The story goes that a tourist, probably Argentine, walked in and requested baby goat’s meat (the Spanish word for a baby goat is chivito), something she had tried in Córdoba and had thoroughly enjoyed. Marcelo, not surprisingly without baby goat meat lying conveniently at hand, whipped up a sandwich of buttered toasted bread, a thin slice of grilled beef and ham; the lady swooned, the rest is history.

El Mejillon at its peak is said to have kept two local butcheries in business with the sale of chivitos and was an icon of the Punta del Este promenade, or rambla as it is locally known, until the sixties when it closed up shop. The best place to have a chivito is obviously on the streets of Montevideo, but the beauty of this monster of a sandwich is that it is easy to make at home. There are many varieties, but here is classic recipe.” – Greg de Villiers