Fiesta Nacional de la Empanada

Held each September in the town of Famaillá in Tucumán province, the Fiesta Nacional de la Empanada honours what might be Argentina's single most beloved dish: the empanada. Tucumán is widely regarded as the empanada's spiritual home within Argentina, and Famaillá's festival has become the country's clearest, most concentrated celebration of the dish's regional variations.

At the festival's centre are empanada-making competitions, where cooks compete to be crowned the year's best, judged on flavour, technique and presentation. Beyond the contests, visitors can sample dozens of regional variations, from the traditional beef-and-onion Tucumán style to more experimental fillings, while live music and family-friendly entertainment run throughout the celebration.

Given how central the empanada is to everyday Argentine life — found on menus from roadside stalls to formal restaurants nationwide — the festival offers a rare opportunity to see an entire town organise itself around a single, universally loved dish, treating it with the kind of dedicated celebration usually reserved for a region's signature wine or cattle breed.