El Oso and I are in Buenos Aires for the next three months working on the books. We’ve been here a month already this year. It seems like it’s been winter forever. We spent the Northern Hemisphere’s winter in rural Pennsylvania, freezing our asses off. Now, as the corn is growing and the sun is shining back home, we’re back here sliding down the far side of autumn again. It’s cold. 

But not that cold. The locals overreact comically to the relatively mild winter. There are scarves, and woolen hats, and puffy urban coats everywhere. The cafe I’m writing in now has the heat cranked up to sauna-like ambience, minus the comfort of nudity and towels. The temperature today? 54°. 

There are great cafes all over this city.

Some are upscale, some are utilitarian, some are neighborhood-y. The coffee within is almost universally good, and always served with a flourish. For instance, the cafe I’m in interprets an order of cafe con leche as a half-full cup of expresso, a brimming teapot of scalded, frothed milk, a miniature plate of miniature cookies, footed glasses and an ice-cold silver pot of sparkling mineral water.  It’s staffed by career-waiter older men, in white shirts, suspenders and bow ties. They carry little billfolds with them, so when you want to pay and leave, you can do so immediately. 

It’s what you’ve always wanted a legitimate neighborhood cafe to be, all noise and constantly swinging front doors; driven by an impenetrable internal logic and a palpable sense of tradition. 

Have I mentioned that I love Buenos Aires? 

Because I do.

It’s a funny city. It reminds me of a 50’s comic book metropolis, with glamourous women stalking about in teetering stiletto heels and low-level danger lurking around every half-lit corner. It is well-designed, lush, lusty. It is also filthy dirty, prone to petty theft, and loud. Impossibly loud.

 

We live above Luis Maria Campos, a major road across from the military college. Our apartment faces the street, three floors up. The only time it is quiet is between 2:30 and 4:30 am, Monday through Thursday. Most of the time when el Oso and I watch movies on my laptop in bed at night, the sound of shrieking bus brakes and taxi horns, not to mention a bewildering array of Latin American musical stylings, drown out the sound so much we have to hold the computer like a foot and a half away from our heads. It’s funny now that we’re used to it, but damn, the first couple weeks…

Also frustrating/amusing is our little kitchen. I lived in Manhattan. I thought I had seen little kitchens. This one definitely wins the Wee Award. I have basically a glorified hot plate and a tiny convection oven that I am afraid to use because it is mounted directly below a wooden cupboard. The first week we were back I reheated some pizza, and for whatever reason I felt the wood above the oven, and it was really, really hot. So, functionally, I have a hot plate and a dorm fridge and like six square feet of kitchen, and a bathroom big enough to do laps in.  I shouldn’t complain, though. The hot plate did come complete with The World’s Smallest Non-Prank Cooking Set, featuring a mini-frying pan and pot, and a baby Dutch Oven. 

I have made a lot of soup.

No, seriously, in two weeks I have made only 1. tomato soup 2. chicken soup 3. stir fry (cooked in two irritatingly time-intensive batches) 4. potato soup 5. polenta. 6. risotto.

In case you hadn’t guessed, we also order out a lot. There are a ton of delivery places, the usual urban suspects like sushi, empanadas, pizza.  However, there are also picadas, who send glorious platters of cheese and meat and bread, and the heladerías, where they send you ice cream. At 1 a.m. Fantastic institutions they are. I dig Persicco, mainly because they send this with your order:

Oh, and this:

That? It’s amost enough to balance out the days you discover are federal holidays too late and can’t get anything done, days where you learn the 50 peso bill you’re trying to buy your groceries with is fake. 

Almost.

Oh, who am i kidding? It totally makes up for everything else.

 

******

 

 

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 22nd, 2008 at 9:44 pm and is filed under Argentina, Buenos Aires, Comfort Food, South America, Street Scenes, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.