Food = Love

When you’re well fed and boozed, life is just better. You become relaxed, gracious, magnanimous. You don’t speak, you enthuse. You don’t get up, you rise. You don’t burp onions, you exhale. And you don’t vomit – you certainly don’t vomit, even after drinking a ginger cocktail and two bottles of Malbec – because the red meat absorbs all the alcohol. You simply glide slowly toward the door, carefully avoiding steps and tables.

We reached such an enlightened state this weekend at the parrilla Cabrera in Palermo Viejo. It was the best meal of our trip so far, and included the best steak I’ve had in a very long time. Beef is amazing here in Argentina – the cows are all grass-fed, are injected with no hormones or antibiotics, and have leaner, sweeter and tastier meat than their cousins in the United States.

Now take such a steak (measuring 12″ x 6″ x 2″), place it on a wooden slab, surround it with little Korean-style bowls of pumpkin, corn, garlic, potatoes, sun-dried tomatoes, mushrooms, etc., and voilà, true love:

What we found after ordering two of the above – we shared both a sirloin and a filet mignon cut – was that customers typically share one of these for two people. So we had two of everything you see above in front of us at the same time, piled high onto a small table. I’ve never felt more like a voracious, fat American. We finished nearly all of it. Special touch: the wait was 40 minutes, and the hostess served free glasses of champagne to those of us standing on the sidewalk to make our wait more comfortable. I love this country.

On Sunday night, we went to Cumaná, a country restaurant know for its hearty stews and empanadas. It was a recommendation from a friend, and proved to be an amazingly good deal ($10 USD / person, including a bottle of wine). And now we know what a perfect empanada is supposed to taste like. They had a fantastic empanada identification scheme, where they would punch holes, morse code-style, in the edges of the empanadas so you knew what they contained. We had to consult the back of our menu, which decoded the patterns into the various empanadas we ordered: pumpkin, ham and cheese, spicy beef, and creamed chard. They even offered a dulce de leche (caramel) filling, but we were too full to indulge in such sin.

American Airlines is going to charge an excessive baggage fee for each cheek of my ass on the return flight.

-J

Public art

Here are some pics of the cool spray can/stencil art we’ve seen on the walls of this fair city. I’m still on the lookout for ABSTEMIO neatly stenciled somewhere.

Click on any of the photos to enlarge.

Going out on a Thursday night

After staying in for our first set of weekend nights here, we decided we’d make something of our second set and find out if all the hype about nighttime BA is actually a bunch of BS. We decided on a place to go and, perhaps to make up for lost time, started the weekend on a Thursday. Before going out though, since most of the clubs here don’t even open–much less get going–until 1AM, we downloaded from iTunes and watched Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.

In my opinion, this is best of the Star Trek movies. Besides the regular crew we’ve come to know and love, the movie also features Christopher Plummer

as the Shakespeare-quoting old-guard Klingon warrior, General Chang; Iman

as Martia, the sexy, shapeshifting alien who uses her feminine wiles to lead Captain Kirk into a trap; and Kim Cattrall

as Lieutentant Valeris, the Vulcan with the not-too-sexy haircut whose traitorous scheming almost derails the nascent Federation-Klingon peace process.

Sure, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

is set in the Bay Area and has some very funny moments and involves Kirk and Co. traveling back in time (to the audience’s present) to borrow a couple of now-extinct (in the audience’s future–the present for the crew of the Enterprise–that is) gray whales so that they can use their whale song to communicate with an alien probe that threatens life on Earth.

But the plot of the The Undiscovered Country is a better balance between the sort of human-interest themes that drive The Voyage Home and the shoot-’em-up space-battle scenes that are just plain exciting. Plus there’s a marked sense of nostalgia, as the Enterprise and its aged crew are called back from the brink of being decommissioned to save the Federation one last time, and also some pretty heavy allegory relating to the end of the Cold War (the movie came out in ‘91).

For a plot synopsis and more information about the making of the movie, check out its Wikipedia entry.

After the movie, we ate an insufficient dinner of fiambres, bread and cheese, and headed out to Glam to “salir de boliche,” as the cabbie explained going out to a club is called. The night was fun; I was regrettably overserved; and the walk home was long in distance, short in memory and rather back-and-forth in execution.

- M

Tickets to Salta

We just reserved our round-trip flights to the Northwest of Argentina – we’ll be staying in and around Salta for two weeks, from Tuesday 7/15 through Tuesday 7/29. After two weeks in Buenos Aires, it will be time to try the other extreme: wide open space. Not sure exactly what we’ll be doing yet, but we may try the “Tren de las Nubes” (Train to the Clouds), which rises high into the Andes near the Chilean border; rent a 4×4 or motorcycles for some dirt-road exploring; stay overnight at an estancia (an Argentine ranch); or buy some llama-wool socks. Or maybe all of the above. We have a few more days here in Buenos Aires, and we’ll have a few at the end of the trip as well, but the country is calling:

-J

McDonalds unleashes ridiculous “China Menu” in Argentina

Put down those chopsticks and pull that wok off the fire! McDonald’s has released a new menu here in Latin America – the 2008 Olympics “China Menu”. It may be coming soon to a McDonalds near you. Item #1 is the Hamburguesa de Beijing – a hamburger topped with chop suey:

Yes, that’s chop suey up in there. Wait – what is chop suey? The Chinese don’t know either – the closest translation is “mixed entrails”.

Taking cultural homogenization to a new extreme, McDonalds has hung lanterns and plastered red posters across its windows featuring dishes that pay homage to the Chinese but have absolutely nothing to do with China. At all. For instance, this alleged Chinese dessert, the “Sundae con Top de Bananas Carmelizada” (Sundae with bananas and caramel):

Nothing evokes the mystery of Old Beijing like a caramel banana sundae.

Scared yet? Don’t worry – if all this foreign food is just too much, the old standards are still on the menu, like the bass-heavy McNifica (closest translation: MacNificent):

-J

Heart of Darkness

Today, Miles and I decided to get out of town, to the nearby river delta region of Tigre. Our incentive: an entry in the Time Out guide advertising a “self-service cocktail bar” hidden amongst waterways. Our mission: to bankrupt this establishment.

After riding the Disney-riffic “Tren de La Costa” to Tigre, we found ourselves on a tourist boat headed into the aquatic maze of the Paraná Delta. Alas, we never did find La Pascuala Delta Lodge, but we did get to luxuriate on the poop deck of the catamaran with a large group of Brazilian tourists and a few Argentinians from Cordoba. Miles struck up a conversation in Spanish with the Cordoban couple, and their two children stared at him like he was a unicorn.

The delta is similar in scale to the Sacramento River delta, but it’s a bit more residential and upscale, with summer vacation cottages strewn amongst its many islands. One of these is the former President of Argentina’s cottage, which for some strange reason has been encased entirely in glass:

The boat staff served us beer and wine on the poop deck:

And our day ended the same way as yesterday:

-J

Argentine drag queen?

From a distance, I thought I had spied my first Argentine drag queen:

But on closer inspection it appeared to be an indigenous person displaying his native dress. Perhaps he’s from Jujuy in the Andes.

No – wait – it’s just a guy selling feather dusters.

-J

Walking in BA

Walking the streets of BA can be hazardous. Proper hydration, regular application of sunblock, and boxer chafe are all serious considerations for the footloose foreign tourist intent on checking off every to-see in this here big city. Add to these the aggressive Porteño driving style and the aggressive defecatory habits of their dogs and you’ve got a whole lot more to think about than just “one foot after the other.”

Jim made an unfortunate misstep the other day, and within minutes of returning home we were cursing the entirety of canine Buenos Aires.

He did, however, get to make use of the neat little baby bathing station that came with the apartment.

- M

Widest avenue in the World!

Avenida 9 de Julio – over 20 lanes. We’re still attempting to get across.

uno dos tres

Counting is easy in Argentina. It’s the same as in Spain or Mexico:

Uno:

Dos:

Tres:

Cuatro:

Cinco:

Seis:

-J