It’s been a longstanding fear of travelers (or travelers like myself, at least) that global conglomerates like McDonald’s or TGI Friday’s might use the bludgeon of the Big Mac or the bluster of Flair to wipe out everything unique, provincial and good. But what struck me on this trip, not having seen BA for a decade and thus being more sensitive to what had changed, was how a different kind of sameness was permeating Porteño restaurant and bar culture—much more indie and elevated, but just as insidious.

Restaurants, bars and coffee shops around the world have started to look, taste, sound, and smell more and more the same.

I’ve seen it in other places I travel to regularly, as well, and it seems to be happening for two reasons: First, the rapid global dissemination of information about everything from roasting techniques to bar bottle arrangement. And second, the increased likelihood that a chef or bartender in, say, BA, will have traveled to New York, Paris or even Tokyo and been influenced by what he or she learned there.

All this has led to a new orthodoxy embraced by the upper-middle-brow, in the form of the Michelin Guide and the San Pellegrino list, and by the high-brow/hipster, in the form of the MAD symposium or Ferran Adria’s El Bulli Foundation: Restaurants, bars and coffee shops around the world have started to follow the same template, from preparation to plating, soundtrack to sous-vide, hand-soap to hanger steak. They have begun to look, taste, sound, and smell more and more the same.

In essence this is a high-end, culinary equivalent of the corporate concept of “best practices.” But maybe best practices, even when they result in superior pasta or coffee, are not what we seek when we travel. Don’t get me wrong: If Porteños want coffee made with the world’s finest machines and food prepared using cutting-edge techniques, they have every right to their La Marzoccos and PacoJets. (And I’m the first to admit my addiction to premium espresso.)

But as a visitor, I also want to see what remains different, special, and unique about a destination. So the question I asked myself while savoring a second lunch at Sabot was, how I might do that, short of eating every meal here? I thought about who the customers were at the rapidly vanishing kinds of places I was after, and I realized the easiest way to find what I sought was to follow the old men (and in some cases the old women) who had been going to these joints their entire lives.