The Foodie Within

I feel like I’m now in a position to make an informed summation on the culinary offerings in Buenos Aires. I had not heard many positive things on coming here and I must admit I was slightly concerned about this given how much of a focus food is to me on any international journey. All it took was a few misjudged orders and a few failed experiments to figure out what to do and what not to do when buying food.

The biggest learning was that it is very very common to share when in a restaurant. You do NOT, as I had previously thought, need a full portion as this more often than not will feed an army and it’s a sure fire way to look like you’re fresh off the boat from some obscenely greedy nation.

The second thing I realised is that variety is not what you should hold out hope for. The Argentines know what they do well and they don’t stray too far from that path. With few exceptions the usual suspects will appear on most menus and it doesn’t take long before this starts to feel very one-dimensional. There is a limit to how many times you can get enthusiastic about steak, potato and salad.

And don’t even get me started on the salads. I am confounded at every turn by the state of salads in Argentina. There are no secrets, no hidden pleasures, no straying from the righteous salad path, not even a surprising dressing or two to turn the ordinary into the extraordinary. They are simply what they say they are. ‘Ensalada de tomate’ is literally tomatoes; ‘ensalada de zanahoria’ is grated carrot and nothing more. The greatest mystery to me though is the ‘ensalada completa’ which essentially amounts to all the salad ingredients they have in the kitchen neatly laid out in one bowl. Nothing is integrated. No ingredients are considered for their complimentary potential. I have come to refer to these weird little creations as Rainbow Salads, for obvious reasons. And yes, that is rolls of cheddar cheese to the left, ham in the middle and shredded chicken on the right.

There are of course a few things that are done exceptionally well here. Pasta for one is fresh, often handmade at the restaurant, and unfailingly tasty. This also can be found everywhere and is a reliable fallback when your meat intake has been pushed to its cholesterol-bearing limit.

Pizza is also done very well and runs the gammut from basic, cheesy and bad to basic, cheesy and awesome. In New Zealand we have turned the humble pizza into a three course meal but Argentine pizza has strong roots in Italian culture where thin bases and simple toppings are key. James can lay claim to discovering the pizza joint where we found these fine examples below…the softest of cheeses, the slight charring of the onion, the crispy base…outstanding.

That’s me trying to pry my jaw apart with a mouthful of mozzarella.

They also do street food with great style here. It’s plentiful, cheap as chips (no pun intended) and incredibly accessible in what are often thriving little local social scenes. One of my favourite discoveries is choripan. It couldn’t be simpler…a fatty, delicious, pork sausage charred over a ferocious grill, wedged in the centre of a white bread roll, with lashings of the local salsa de rigeur – chimichurri. This divine little condiment deserves a blog all of its own but in short it’s a salsa made from finely chopped red pepper, tomato, onion, garlic and parsley brought together to stew itself to perfection with olive oil, vinegar, chilli, paprika, oregano and bay. It’s a revelation. No sausage sizzle will ever be the same again.

Add to all this the outstanding roadside ‘homemade’ hamburgers (meat pattie, fried egg, charred onion and peppers, lettuce, tomato, salsa verde), the legendary throw-a-cow-on asados, icecream to die for, empanadas worth crossing the city for, cakes as good as your Grandma makes and you have more than enough to keep your stomach happy and probably a little rounder.

All in all I can say I’ve really enjoyed the food here. It’s nothing especially adventurous or innovative but they know what they do well and they stay away from the rest. Having said that I could murder some good strong coffee, cracked pepper, grainy bread and a fish or four. There’s always something you pine for right?

The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

It’s inevitable, in any city of this scale, that over time you see some pretty tough home truths. Reality, in other words. There is a massive gap between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’ in Buenos Aires and, while many tourists may pass through without seeing much of this, we have stayed long enough to see some of the city’s grim inner machinations.

The subway system is of course a reliable platform for social observation. The trains provide great selling opportunities for some of Buenos Aires’ poorer inhabitants who take full advantage of the fact that commuters will be sitting and listening for at least a couple of stops.

The selling style employed is a relatively effective one. It’s non-confrontational, non-aggressive and as a result fairly well responded to…all things considered. The most popular technique is to place the item that is up for sale on the knees of the passengers as the seller makes their way down the length of the carriage. Often this is done without a word, just quietly leaving the item sitting there for you to observe, ponder, pick up and ultimately realise that it is something you do in fact need. They will then recirculate through the carriage either wordlessly collecting the unwanted items or exchanging them for a couple of peso.

The most troubling part is when you see young children on the trains peddling their wares. I’ve seen some children no older than six working their way up and down the aisles and it’s a very sobering thing to see. Some are so young they are completely unaware of their surrounds, the potential for danger, how vulnerable they are…one young girl emptied out her grubby wallet onto a seat, slowly and carefully smoothed out all her $2 peso bills and repacked them into the wallet before stumbling her way back down the train to collect more, completely lost in her own world.

Any number of things could be up for sale on any given day. They range from the useful and handy (tissues, gum, world cup schedules), to slightly more unlikely items (free-standing mirrors, proverbs, filofax), through to unabashed pleas for help such as handwritten notes which get left on your knee describing unenviable and precarious situations.

The more creative ones I’ve seen include a guy walking on with a stereo on his shoulder, playing (admittedly awful) electronic dance music, selling CDs. Another old man was folding tiny and perfect origami swans on the spot with clumsy, dirty fingers, injecting each swan with a spluttery gust from crusty lips and then somehow…miraculously…still managing to charm money out of the ladies on the train despite his questionable level of coherence.

One thing I will say is that the Porteños display nothing but patience and generosity with the train sellers. In all my time here I have never seen a situation grow into one of aggravation. It is something that appears to be accepted as the fabric of city life and more often than not people will help where they can. It is a tenuous positive but one which does leave you with a glimmer of hope in an otherwise depressing reality.

We are not Amused

We’re in the wind-down now to our final week in BA. I set a new geek benchmark and made a two-week schedule to ensure we fitted everything in that we wanted to do before we left. Even James think this is a good thing. He won’t openly admit it but secretly he loves the schedule.

As a result our week has been very well structured, if I do say so myself…we’ve managed to achieve the delicate balance of sufficient time spent lazing about interspersed with mildly constructive activities to reassure us that we are still making the most of our time here.

Take the Tigre amusement park for example – an entertaining, energetic and above all amusing way to spend the day with a touch of social observation thrown in for good measure. A fascinating and worthwhile pursuit when you are An Outsider.

We had seen the Parque de la Costa on a couple of occasions during ventures into the Delta area from the Tigre township. On one such trip it had yet to open for the season. On another it was sparsely populated at best. My kind of amusement park. Of course, the world has a way of arranging itself in a manner which often thwarts and confounds the best laid plans. We turned up, after a two hour trek out of the city limits, to hundreds of amusement-junkies and their spawn waiting keenly in multiple queues beneath the intense midday sun.

Our instinct was to instantly high-tail it out of there but given our lengthy journey we opted to give it a go. We bought our ‘access-all-rides’ tickets, got through the door and beelined it for El Infierno to get the ball rolling. No such luck…queues were already forming and the ride was not even open. We were already aiming high at this point, bypassing Lame Lane and heading straight for Adrenaline Avenue (true story).

They have a cunning method in amusement park circles of disguising the length of a queue by weaving the punters back and forth in a manner which makes the wait look shorter than it actually is. When it came to the rollercoasters however, this method didn’t manage to disguise much at all. I was not surprised. James was astounded. Rainbow’s End this ain’t.

We thought we’d suck it up though and get in the queue – if we were to queue for anything it would surely be the rollercoaster. Five minutes and one heat-struck punter later we noticed a sign attached to a pole midway down the queue. By the time we had read the words ‘waiting time from this point 2.30hs’ we already had our legs up and over the barriers, muttering under our breath at why anyone in their right mind would wait that long in the 35 degree heat for a ride which was over in within a minute. It was simply unfathomable.

Not entirely sure what to do at this point we ruefully glanced at our ‘access-all-areas’ wrist bands and mulled over the irony of it all. We decided to cut our loses and head back to the ferris wheel in Lame Lane which though pretty to look at is, let’s be honest here, a huge bore. About all we achieved in our circular rotations was to locate one ride hidden at the back of a hill with very few queues and just enough screams to warrant our interest.

And so it was that we rode the runaway wagon with an enthusiastic gang of pimply, pierced, teenage clones who chanted “otra…otra…otra” midway through the ride just to make sure it was not quite at an end. It was entirely ridiculous how much fun this one ride was. I guess it went some way to explaining the motivations behind willingly subjecting yourself to heat exhaustion and the irretrievable loss of over two hours of your life. Sort of.

All in all we spent a total of three hours in the park and rode a total of two rides. This flawed ratio had us cutting our loses and heading straight for the nearest cafe for beer and peanuts, safe in the knowledge that our thirst for amusement parks had been sated for at least another 10 years.

The Great Outdoors

It’s pretty easy to understand the reasons why half the city vacate to the coastline during January. The heat is sweltering, humid and dirty. It’s extremely difficult to find respite from days which reach the mid-30′s…shady parks don’t entirely cut the mustard.

Having said this you certainly can’t fault the Porteños for their enthusiastic embracing of summer in the city. The government has come to the party with an inititive called ‘Aires Buenos Aires’ with a variety of free and accessible events currently being put on all over the central city. Plazas are being turned into faux-beaches and parks are being utilised for free open-aired concerts. An effort to console those who cannot make it out of the city limits.

Puerto Madero is one such area which draws serious crowds in the weekends.  It’s a peculiar and somewhat soulless part of the city, being only 20 years old, but one which is in easy walking distance for us from our apartment in San Telmo…one of the oldest barrios in Buenos Aires. We haven’t really explored the area very much as it has limited appeal compared to the rest of the city. It’s the new hip area to live for wealthy professionals and is somewhere I compare, at least in part, to Auckland’s viaduct.

Puerto Madero has its own fascinations though, one being that an ecological reserve flanks its border and provides a massive tranquil area to explore with hundreds of bird species to watch out for. You’ll find many a bespectacled man, wearing utilitarian cargo pants with zip-off legs, carrying large and cumbersome cameras and tripods undertaking serious bird-watching activities.

The other intriguing feature of the area is demonstrated by the way in which the Porteños have embraced its outdoor areas and in turn brought a little soul to an otherwise clean and shiny concrete beast.

There is a significant amount of activity near the entrance to the ecological reserve on any given night of the week.  Sundays, however, are a whole other kettle of fish. The promenade running the length of the reserve and surrounding park areas teem with people. Lying about in parks; eating from one of the many street food vendors (it is here we have discovered THE best burgers in the world for a mere $7 peso); watching locals dancing in the centre of a plaza; checking out the artisan markets; cooling off in a street fountain; or just sitting on a wall doing some professional people-watching.

Quite a treat greeted us when we walked down last Sunday. A sweaty, long-haired, pony-tailed dance instructor was leading a group of loose-hipped women of all ages through a series of provocative and saucy moves to the rhythms of some cheesy Latin beats. Once again the Argentine sense of body pride was a thing to be admired.  ALL shapes and sizes had their shortest shorts on, their croppest crop-tops…or just their bikinis…and were gyrating with such energy and commitment as to put Beyonce to shame. Again, kind of weird to see 10 year olds wriggling around with the kind of moves that would make the Pope blush, but there you go…

I’m not entirely sure why this one woman decided to make her own dancefloor up on the hillside but there she was, jiggling about with as much enthusiasm as the ladies on the pavement, standing out like a sore thumb in a bikini which had a tenuous and somewhat frightening hold on her modesty. Funnily enough I was the only one who seemed to notice her.  No one else appeared to bat an eyelash. Am I the only one here who finds this so amusing and peculiar?!?!?

So we rounded off the evening of burgers, choripan and roadside beers with a laze about in a park which was to host an evening’s free entertainment from local Argentine musicians. As the crowds slowly but surely grew local street vendors came out of the woodwork in droves, selling a great assortment of wares to as many willing punters as they could. Icecreams on bicycles, filled bread in baskets, mosquito repellent, mini-2010 calendars, toys, beverages…you name it, it was there. Presentation is often very creative when selling to the masses. We awarded runner up to a guy who was balancing a huge net of plastic balls on top of his head (and when I say huge I mean a full net radius equivalent to that of his height). First place went to a charming old man selling candy floss from an aesthetically pleasing pole. We felt twinges of envy for whomsoever was the lucky kid to have a grandfather like that. Shouldn’t all granddads be selling candy floss in their twilight years??

Thou Shalt Not Enter

We tried to go to church this morning.  We had our sins ready to confess, there was plenty of repenting to be done…we hadn’t really thought through our outfits very well though so couldn’t enter the Lord’s house. My cap turned sideways drew many a disapproving stare but it was James’ crop top that really was the final straw. We remain burdened by our sins.

Asado en el Campo

I’ll be the first to admit that we have made considerably fewer connections in this city than we had anticipated. I think it comes down to a couple of factors…number 1 – the ‘Curse of the Couples’; and number 2 – that we live in our own apartment rather than sharing with others. James’ lack of Spanish is clearly a barrier for him, and me…well…I’ve got no excuse really, other than that approaching people makes me feel uncomfortable and shy…a feeble excuse at best.

We have made one rather unusual and unforeseeable friendship however. I’ve had many a bantering email with the owner of the apartment we are now renting in San Telmo. Though he owns this apartment in BA he is actually based in Madrid so he put me in touch with his family who are more readily available to make arrangements for our lodgings. Initially his father called and asked us over for a coffee prior to taking over the apartment. This in itself seemed a little unusual as there must be a great number of tenants who rent this apartment in any given year and surely they didn’t extend this kind of hospitality to all ‘n sundry.

We didn’t turn the offer down though and made our way over to the wealthy Recoleta suburb one hot afternoon to meet Ana and Nick in their incredibly well considered apartment which was chocker block full of antiques, paintings, sculptures, piles of books…even a harpsichord. We stayed and chatted for a while, thinking they really just wanted to make sure we were good sorts and left thinking we’d only meet up again to collect the keys and exchange money.

As it turns out they took a liking to us…was probably James and his magic charm powers again…and called a week later to invite us out to an asado at their country house just outside a small town called Lobos, about one hour south of BA. They invited some other friends…his business partners and their wives and in turn asked us if, along with everyone else, we would like to stay the night. So stay we did.

Our Mums would have been beside themselves to see to this incredible house. They converted what was a huge old shed into a family home, retaining the immense shed as a remarkable space from which they built the rest of the house around. Ana and Nick are serious collectors and as with their city apartment their country house was full of antique furniture, low-hanging silk lamps from Shanghai, enough books to start a library, sculptures, artwork, rugs from all over the world…the list goes on and on.

Chickens, roosters, horses, geese, dogs and guinea fowl roamed freely about the property. A huge irrigation tank had been converted into a 6 foot deep swimming pool which we naturally made good use of. And then there was the main event…the asado.

You may have read in a previous blog that we made an attempt at cooking an asado while we were in Uruguay…not an easy thing to the hungry and uninitiated. Asados take at least an hour to prepare and another hour to cook the meat. The set ups are fairly rudimentary. This one consisted of two sheets of corrugated iron upon one of which the fire was built. Half a tree is burnt down to embers at which point they are shoveled from one corrugate to the other, above which is placed an iron grate.

Then the meat comes out. And when I say meat, I mean MEAT. Not a vegetable in sight. The hybrid NZ style barbecue has yet to create interest in this part of the world. Fried onion…good Lord no.  Charred veges…what the hell for??  It’s meat meat and more meat. A leg of lamb, strings of chorizo, half a cow, some glands and a blood sausage or ten.

I amazed even myself and tried both blood sausage (really tasty) and glands (truly hideous). It took a few slugs of the free-flowing rosé to wash that aftertaste away. It had to be tried though…an Argentine asado is not the place to be precious about meat.

So we consumed until our stomachs bulged; fudged our way through the circle of conversation; ate a year’s supply of the unbelievably good Argentine icecream; and sat outside in the beautiful surrounds as long as we could before the mosquitos mauled us too close to dengue fever for comfort.

It’s truly humbling to experience hospitality to such a degree. Ana and Nick were so generous to us, collecting us from the bus station, making us feel completely welcome in their home, inviting us to stay a second night, cooking beautiful meals…even sending us home with a bag of farm-laid eggs. It’s one of the greatest mysteries and pleasures of travel. Unsolicited acts of generosity and hospitality that will never be forgotten.

Peaches & Pears

As predicted the aforementioned Parque Norte certainly delivered one of the more bizarre swimming experiences I have ever had. To begin with the journey there involved the traversing of a heaving, humid, polluted, noisy, frenetic central city…first via subte, then by train and followed lastly by a perilous sprint across a busy stretch of highway.

We arrived slightly frazzled but with the promise of wetlands just minutes away we managed to hold ourselves together. With our money paid we made our way through a thick throng of children to the changing rooms. One bathing suit and half a tube of sunscreen later I emerged to meet James at the pool entrance gate, handed over my receipt and waited for the all important stamp to deem me appropriate for admittance.

Not so fast little lady. Have you had your medical exam? Errr…my what? Exasperated we exchanged incredulous glances and dragging our feet like 8 year olds made our way back to the changing rooms. Not knowing to what extent we would be examined I did consider abandoning the plan and hightailing it back into the city.

The awesome thing about being one of two who speaks Spanish is that I get to go first in all unknown scenarios. It’s my favourite job. Kind of like a lab rat. So I got into the queue, made my way to a cubicle where an ‘examiner’ was waiting and looked at her blankly awaiting instruction.

The test amounted to this…I had to lift my feet onto a small stool and spread my toes apart so she could give a perfunctory glance between them for some killer presence other than the city dirt that was currently residing there. I then had to bend my head forward so she could check the nape of my neck for dandruff, lice, grey hairs…god knows what. She did all this without medical gloves on so whatever she found lurking in my hair was no doubt passed on to the next victim in line. I gave her my name, she gave me a pink ‘all-clear’ card and a nod and that was that. Any other greeblies I had could clearly be taken care of by the high level of chlorine in the water. James emerged moments later with a blue-card-of-acceptance having undergone the same pointless checks, though apparently they also gave his armpits the once-over.

The pool area consisted of three rather sizeable swimming holes. All sides of which were heavily populated with overheated Porteños and their families. Fortunately there was plenty of shade available as these areas tended to be towards the edges of the complex. Two things the Porteños seek out is maximum sun and maximum exposure at all times. In my low-leg, one-piece suit I was wearing the granny-equivalent of swimming attire. Body pride in Argentina is astounding and admirable. It pretty quickly brings into relief the much less healthy and prudish NZ attitude to bodies when you see how proudly and freely the Argentines parade themselves, irrespective of body-type. It is incredibly refreshing to see. They really don’t care. The mantra seems to be “have arse, will parade”.

The slightly disturbing part is when you see young girls around 12-13 years old wearing the popular and provocative style of bikini donned by most women. If I had a daughter I would be following her around with a chastity towel covering up her rear end and slapping her young male friends around the cheeks if they should so much as give a glance in that direction. I’m going to be such a great Mum.

As far as the swim part goes…I would have been in there for at least one minute. No more, no less. By the time I got into the pool a few schools worth of kids had been dropped off at the gates and armies of children had swamped the waters. It was clear to me that my toe dirt and grey hairs were the LEAST of their worries.

So between this, the regular planes flying low overhead, the packs of girls posing for photos, the over-tanned cigarette-smoking Mums in g-strings and the young lovers nearly making love on the grass it was overall a somewhat bizarre way to spend a day.

Having said this though it was not without its merits.  You really do have to look at the swimming experience in a completely different way in Buenos Aires. You take what you can get and you make the most of it. They are even converting parks and plazas into faux-beaches for the city-dwellers who can’t make it to the real thing, to the extent of bringing in sand, sun loungers and umbrellas to recreate the beach experience. Some people even comment that they prefer this kind of set up as these spaces are less crowded than the real thing. For us beach-spoilt New Zealanders it’s a relation to the coastline that is hard to imagine.

More Than Words

Simple. To the point. Rather effective really.

The Sweats

The Argentine weather gods have just taken the temperatures in BA to the next level. Apparently they’re on the fast track to a promotion. It hit 30 degrees today. I can hear my Brisbane-based sister scoffing as she reads this, “Ha! I’ll see your 30 and raise you 6!”.  Whatever. I’m a newbie to this extreme-heat challenge. I’m melting at the rate of the polar ice cap. I can’t drink water fast enough to keep a balance on the moisture I’m losing.

It’s not uncommon to see women maintaining the fan tradition here. This is an aspect of the heat I like. They are such great accessories. Bringing a touch of old-world charm to the dirty old modern times. I’m going to bring one back and use it on the bus up Queen Street just like the Porteñas do. It’ll be the next big thing let me tell you straight. It might draw a look or two but they will surely be looks of envy, not of scorn.

Unless you sit completely motionless, in an air-conditioned room, with nothing on but your undies…you sweat. Profusely at that. And seeing as James insisted I put clothes on before leaving the house today I was doomed to discover just how many parts of my body produce sweat in hot climates. Here is a selection of my personal favourites:

1 – Kneecaps (who knew your knees could sweat?!)

2 – Hairline at Nape of Neck (producing a nice just-bryled-my-hair effect)

3 – Top Lip (the height of feminine allure)

4 – Bellybutton (an oldie but a goodie)

I have also noticed that I’m employing the popular cooling technique which involves the slow inhalation of breath, puffing out of cheeks and exhalation through pursed lips. The human version of panting I suppose.

We are attempting to devise any means available to us to escape the heat of the city. Swimming options are few and far between in Buenos Aires. Any beach worth risking dipping a toe into is at least a couple of hours drive away, preferably more. We have, however, discovered a public pool complex which is a short train ride away and seriously popular with any Argentines who haven’t got the means or the inclination to join half the South American population in Punta del Este. Can’t imagine why.

Just another relaxing day with the masses at Punta del Este

We were killing time over a coffee in a small town cafe a couple of days ago, watching a somewhat questionable news bulletin which was screening from a conveniently positioned television. The ‘article’ was being filmed from Parque Norte, the aforementioned BA pool complex.  This hardline investigation essentially consisted of a creative variety of shots ranging from close-ups to extreme-close-ups of women’s scantily-clad butts.

Now, anyone who has attempted to shop for a bikini in Argentina will know that not much is left to the imagination. The weirdest part of it was that the women were more than happy to parade their peachy buttocks for the camera which would often zoom in to pimple-revealing range and linger for a good 30 seconds or so before moving on to the next willing rear end.  Of which there appeared to be no shortage.

So yes! This is where we are going to escape the summer heat. James is excited. I feel confident that I will be able to bring back plenty of photographic evidence to enliven my blog. I think I can safely approach any number of women and say something to the effect of “Can I take a photo of your bum and post it on my blog for the world to see?”. I just have to say practice how to say it in Spanish now.

Minimalism

The food here is a truly confounding beast. On the one hand it can be so simplistic as to be disappointing and on the other this simplicity can be the very thing which makes it memorable.

Take last night’s dinner for example. We often seek out, and make beelines for, the old-school Argentine joints…those with neon lighting, no-frills service, rowdy groups of locals and simple but cheap eats.

Club Eros was a prime example of such a restaurant. A young, heavily pregnant and disinterested waitress, a two-page menu, impossibly simple salads and more neon lighting than you could poke a stick at. All within one of the most fashionable areas of Palermo.

We were in the mood for meat and naturally enough the ‘bife de chorizo’ (aka tenderloin) was easily located. I was wanting of a vegetable or two to augment the brown colour palate so attempted to order potatoes (no issues here), a mixed salad (sorry we have run out of lettuce…oh yeah, and tomato), roasted pumpkin (none of that either), eggplant (refer to previous answer)…okay so ahhhhh…how about the carrot salad (that we can do).

A bottle of Malbec and a semi-happy-nod-to-the-waitress later our food arrived. I want to say “I can’t describe how simple the food was” but the reality is I can indeed pull these words together.  It was…meat, on a plate; boiled and salted potatoes, on a plate; and grated carrot, in a slightly more bowl-like plate.

Cholesterol-wise this meal was pretty much a disaster on all counts. Flavour-wise this meal had it all right. The meat was tender and juicy, the potatoes were soft and salty, the carrots were sweet and well…carrots. Somehow it worked. I think the $20 price tag might have had something to do with expectations but all in all we walked away with happy stomachs.

It’s been a slow learning curve but if you dig a little below the surface the food here in BA can be great. You learn how to order wisely…that salads will literally come out as they are described on the menu (tomato salad is just tomatoes; beetroot salad is just beetroot); that meat will be well cooked and of good quality; and that you can order meals ‘hold-the-cheese’.

And you can rest easy at night knowing that if all else fails there will always be empanadas. Mmmmm empaaaanaaaadas.