Weblog
Peruvian Food in Buenos Aires
Updated Dec 10th.
The other day I went to Xalapa, a Mexican restaurant, in Palermo Veijo and the meal I had was ok; maybe it was what I ordered; I have had some good meals here before I should say. And yesterday (Dec 4th) I was reading a blog from someone who until recently lived in Buenos Aires and he was of the opinion that Mexican food is not very good at all here in Argentina. Well, I would not say it is bad but it could possibly be better. The same blogger "Disco Shawn" went on to say the best ethnic food in Buenos Aires is Peruvian. Hmmm. And I have been really curious to try out some Peruvian food for about a month now after talking about with Cat & her husband Dan. Cat I had met on a Spanish class. She is a fellow Canadian in Argentina.
I was to meet up with Jennifer and her boyfriend Carlos. Jen I have met a few times in London; I know her through Karen from Oz. Jen is from Argentina and had been living in the UK for a few years. It was good to finally to get meet up with her and catch up and also to get to know Carlos. We had a very fine evening chatting mostly in English. I did attempt a few words here & there in Spanish.
Villa Gesell on the Atlantic coast
A couple of weeks ago now back in mid November, I went to Villa Gesell on the Atlantic coast. The idea was to have a weekend away from Buenos Aires. Things did not quite go as planned; the road signs on the highway were not very helpful. What should have been a 3 and half drive took 5 hours as we missed a turn somewhere. And then we spent another hour looking for a particular hotel in the middle of the night; it turns out the hotel was no longer a hotel. We did eventually settle on a place and for me, it was quite good; the hotel staff were very friendly and one of the staff Andrea spoke very good English; she had actually lived in London for a spell and helped as much as possible to make the most of our time in the Villa. The hotel is called Olas. And it is more of an apartment hotel. The decor was minimal and functional; one of the hotel we saw was so incredibly garish; it would have been kind of surreal to have stayed in the room we saw.
Villa Gesell is a popular destination in the summer; at the time we were there it was fairly quiet. So there was not to many people on the beach. One can imagine how in December the place will be just heaving with people.
Ultratango
I am so happy. Last night, I went with Gina & Julie to see a band called Ultratango; I found out about the gig from the web-site What's Up Buenos Aires. This web site has been so handy for finding out about live music in Bs. As.
Ultratango were performing in the Niceto club in Palermo, Hollywood. What Ultratango has been doing is taking music by composers like Astor Piazzolla and adding new sounds. I suppose you could call it Tango Electronica (is there such a term?). If you have heard of the Gotan Project, you know what I am talking about. Ultratango are a five member band with a drummer, violinist, a keyboard player, a bandoneón player and another keyboard player who does the 'programming'.
One of the essential instruments in the Tango is the bandoneón; the bandoneón is a squeeze box; it looks different from a typical accordion as you can see from the image. For me, the bandoneón is such a rich and emotional sounding instrument. The accordion is one of those instruments that I can find quite 'cheesy' but handled well it is can make beautiful music.
The Andes
This past week, I went to the province of Mendoza with Gina. We travelled there by overnight bus and visited a few bodegas and drank "mucho vino".
And we had to go up to the Andes while there. We took a tour bus that made a few stops and went as far as the border crossing with Chile & Argentina. It was so ruggedly beautiful up there. We even saw some wild horses; they would have to be quite hardy to survive in such a place; Mendoza is a desert and vegetation is mostly just scrub. All the bodegas depend on irrigation to bring the water from the Andes down to the grapes.
I have put some of the photos up on Flickr
I have more to say about Mendoza shortly (promises, promises)
Coincidences
Most people have heard that expression "things happen in threes". Something has happened to me twice recently and I was waiting for it to happen again and sure enough it did.
Over the past 2 weeks, I have been sitting at dinner and I have had the waiter or waitress accidentally knock something over and it just misses me. I don't recall where the first place was but the 2nd time was at Bar Uriarte in Palermo. I went there for some drinks with Gina and we were sitting at the bar; the bartender's name is Diego; a thoroughly likeable chap. I thought he looked a bit like a Latino John Travolta. The drink of the week was a cocktail called an "Italian Jack"; I had to try one and it was very good. It was such a nice pleasant atmosphere that we decided to have dinner there and there was no tables available so we ate at the bar. We just happened to be sitting right by where Diego makes the drinks. Dinner by the way was excellent; I had some herb stuffed chicken on a bed or barley. Shortly after dinner, Diego loses hold of something as he was making a drink and it splashes over my dinner plate and mostly misses me. I had to laugh at it all as it was narrow miss and I just got a little water on me.