I felt compelled to write a review because the other ones are too old. I stayed in Buenos Aires with my wife and children during August 19-26 / 2007. Puerto Madero is one of the places that you must visit in Buenos Aires. I understood that it was the old Buenos Aires' port and was a ruin until a few years ago when the city began urban renewal of all the place. In one side you will see new and modern buildings and on the other the old port depots converted to beatiful buildings with restaurants, stores and apartments. You will find two interesting ships from the 1890 and 1920s that are museums. Even the old cranes have been painted and restored and are now an original decoration of what once was the main port of Buenos Aires.
The place is perfect to visit at any time, and it is huge. You have to like to walk. Near dike 1 you will find Cabaña Las Lilas. Superb food, wine and service. It is expensive for Argentinian standards, but I am sure you will find it not as expensive as many similar restaurants in other countries that don't get even closer to Las Lilas quality. In the other extreme (dike 4, you have to walk a lot) you will find Siga La Vaca restaurant. An All you can Eat restaurant, inexpensive and excellent. Don't expect gourmet wine or service, but we don't have any complaint. You pay per each person that take a chair and the included beverage can be a bottle of wine (per person!!). My wife wasn't feeling well, we think due to some virus, and the waitress was kind enough as to offer not to charge her if she didn't feel good to eat. At the end my wife ate because everything was so good.
I don't have any problem with pickpockets or strange people. There are policemen everywhere and the place is clean, open, full of students of a nearby university, people that work in the office builidings and other tourists. Between dike 1 and dike 4 you will find a lot of other restaurants. They looked nice but I didn't eat at them, so can't say anything about their quality. On the other hand, one thing difficult to find during our visit to B.A. was a place with bad food. We didn't get into anyone.
Regarding taxis, remises and radio taxis. Radio taxis require a telephone number before sending you a taxi. So have at hand your hotel or rented apartment phone number. They don't accept cell phones if the number is from other country. We used this service mainly to get from our apartment to other place. Once in the street, we used to stop taxis and didn't have any bad experience. But we are latinamericans and our first language is Spanish. Our accent revealed we are foreigners but even the worst faced taxi driver that we met, was at the end much nicer that any other similar taxi drivers we had met in other countries. Use common sense and be modest. I found the porteños (Buenos Aires people) are the most educated and friendly people. They will help you and make you feel at ease.
