Siri in Buenos Aires: June 2012

A CULINARY SURPRISE

2010

After Spring Day the sun is back in a blue sky and its noticeably warmer. We catch a cab, driven by talkative ‘Yoyo’, who offers us a variety of programs and criticizes our destination of the Paseo Alcorta shopping mall, ‘ the most expensive in town,’ he says. Nonetheless, we persist and he drops us in front of the mall, where a scruffy teenager immediately sidles up to the car with his hand stretched out. ‘Don’t worry,’ says Yoyo sensing our ‘carioca’ hesitation, ‘he won’t do anything.’ Oswaldo has a note ready and we hurry inside.

After completing our shoe-quest, which involves Blackberry chatting with Victor in Rio and sending photos by e-mail with choices, we’re off to the nearby Malba to see the Constantini collection. The museum is beautiful and airy, home to wonderful paintings, which we are seeing for the second time.

It’s time for lunch and we opt to sit on the restaurant terrace. The prices are eyebrow-raising high, but all is forgiven when our orders come. I get 5 small glasses filled with different vegetarian sample dishes ranged on a bed of rock salt on a long platter: little cooked and peeled potatoes in a mustard sauce with seeds and chopped spring onions, couscous with almonds, mousseline of sweet potatoes, eggplant, peppers and cabbage marinated in olive oil, and a red indian dish with carrots and pumpkin. Oswaldo’s plate of long pieces of baguette toast with hot goat cheese and strips of red pepper leaning on a green salad also promises. All delicious and creative. A fruit salad passes us on the way to the next table: a sparkling martini glass filled with chopped mango, strawberries and kiwi - so simple, and yet the colors really make the dish.

Oswaldo takes off for his second lecture and drops me at the Galerias Pacifico, where I have to change something - alas ‘muy chico’ - too small. When I leave I see the tango dancers again in the middle of an appreciative crowd, but I am planning to walk home and want to reach the hotel before dark. Crossing Plaza San Martin like any other ‘Porteña’, I walk down Santa Fe, cross Nueve de Julio and turn into Libertad, which I follow until I can continue down Quintana, past Callao, then left on Ayacucho, right on Guido - and I’m home! How great is that to have learnt my way around a part of Buenos Aires!

SHOPPING AND MALBA

IT IS A HAPPY CONFLUENCE

OF PURPOSE THAT A MUSEUM FILLED WITH BEAUTIFUL PAINTINGS SHOULD SERVE BEAUTIFUL AND MOUTHWATERING DISHES.

PUERTO MADERO AND TANGO IN THE STREET

Our first gray day is also the official first day of spring, a traditional holiday for all students. When we reach Puerto Madera, intending a stroll, lunch somewhere, and a visit to the Colección de Arte Amalia Lacroze de Fortabat, we find we are sharing the area with animated groups of teenagers with innovative piercings and hair-styles, very different from the tweed and cashmere or straightened-blond-hair-black-lycra-jeans-into-heeled-black-boots crowds of Recoleta. There is a lot of police presence, easy to spot with their khaki uniforms and fluorescent orange vests, also patrolling the water. We learn later that there have been armed scuffles in Palermo - 70 wounded in what was reportedly a massive drunken brawl. When we spot the General Sarmiento, a magnificent schooner which has been turned into a maritime museum, we do not hesitate, but jump on board. The ship went several times around the world, the first trip recorded more than 45,000 miles, and they had a mascot, Lampazo,

a big hairy Terranova dog, which, when it expired, was brought back from a trip and lovingly stuffed to be displayed in a glass case. We think of Shackleton’s expedition to the Antarctic and how they had to eat the dogs they loved.

We walk across the interesting Woman’s bridge and soon find an inviting restaurant (not really a challenge in Buenos Aires, where, by the way, I have not seen a single obese person in spite of the obvious eating theme everywhere). We’re mingling with the office crowd out to catch lunch from the prosperous offices lining the water and I observe the HUGE heels that the Argentinean women wear with such natural aplomb. Unthinkable for someone my height! We have a lovely lunch at a waterside restaurant, Central Market, where we have dewy beers and salad/sandwiches. Then we saunter off to the museum, which has an eclectic, but interesting, collection housed in a beautiful and very opulent structure with a lot of glass and blond wood. On the top floor we find a couple of very old Egyptian and Greek pieces displayed in that elegant atmosphere of doused light and the shimmering water outside, and it is a treat just to look at these few amazing relics - instead of whole areas, like in the major museums of the world. We finish off with yet another ‘cortado’ in the café of the museum, where the surrounding landscape is reflected in its windows.

We walk uphill to the Galerias Pacifico, where Oswaldo submits to the waiting resignation of many husbands, while their wives are looking to shop. His agony is cut short when we stop outside onto the Calle Florida and find that exotic tango dancers have set up shop. We have avoided the so-called Tango Dinner Shows, put off by photos of long tables in rows waiting for the tourists, and here is the real thing: people having fun dancing, mischievously, because tango is sexy, and with great grace. Maybe the best way to see this. We see the older man dancing with the curvy sensuous woman, the sexually undefined man (in the red suit), dancing with the man, and the handsome young man, bending his head gracefully to dance with vigor with the woman - fascinating stuff. We rush into the mega cd basement across the road and stock up on music and movies. Then we find a taxi intending to try a Volta ice-cream near the hotel. I have a divine combination of ‘(t)cholotate con almendras and maracuya’ and Oswaldo an irresistibly sticky ‘dulce de leche’ and Belgian chocolate. When we leave we encounter one of those bands of dogs at the end of their walk. The walker has stopped at the entrance to an apartment to drop three dogs. Then he pops in his ear-buds and walks off with his smaller group, calling out ‘Vamo-nos, Glória!’ to a distracted Labrador and cursing a driver that almost hits his pack.

We collapse in our room full of impressions.

Later we rouse ourselves to try a Italian restaurant next to our hotel. San Balbino, complete with an tenor-voiced hip-wagging accordion player, who turns out to be studying music/conducting at UCA where Oswaldo gave his talk. Oswaldo gets him to play Funiculá, and we happily contemplate the mysterious powers of music over a bottle of Pinot Noir and pasta ‘sin carne,’ accompanied by the excellent bread that always marks an excellent restaurant.

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