Feeling kind of like the blind pig and the truffle. Sorting through apartment rental options on line back in New York, picked this place, not having the slightest idea where it was located, and it turns out to be one block over and three blocks down from the two locations -- both torn down and rebuilt -- where Borges was born and where he came back to live in the 20´s. While there he wrote,
This city that I believed was my past,
Is my future, my present;
The years I have spent in Europe are an illusion,
I always was (and will be) in Buenos Aires.
The Rough Guide -- aside from that Borges quote and info -- is also quite good in general on Palermo Viejo. Cortazar´s Hopscotch was set -- to the extent Hopscotch could be set -- here, and he is remembered, sort of, with the Plazoleta Julio Cortazar, where Honduras and Serrano (before it is renamed Jorge Luis Borges) converge. But, says the Rough Guide, and sadly to my way of thinking, no one calls it Plaza Cortazar (though he´s only been dead 22 years), but Plaza Serrano. It is ringed by the inevitable street artesania sellers, mostly colorful schlock. Some semi-precious stones jewelry. In the ¨which U.S. punk bank is commemorated on the most T-shirts¨competition, the Ramones win in a landslide. Che is more seen for sale than worn; that´s one mythology -- unlike Cortazar´s creations -- to which I would say good riddance.
On their first day here I was watching Sebastian and Colin play on the seesaw in Plazoleta Cortazar. One evening back in 1984 before the family arrived I was walking along Avenida Corrientes late at night and saw the shocking headline that Cortazar had died -- nearly 70 but still too soon for his work -- in Paris. And 22 years later watching my grandchildren in the plaza named for him, grown-up player that he was. Connecting those two life snapshots feels both incomprehensible and fitting.
Friday, December 29, 2006
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Buenos Aires
I started the blog about New York. Annie´s illness intervened, and with it paralysis for almost everything, including writing this. And now the bulk of what´s written so far will turn out to be about Buenos Aires. That´s fine. Like New York, it´s a subject of endless variety and fascination.
December 13 -- The apartment is in Palermo Viejo, on Gurruchaga, corner of El Salvador. A small loft apartment townhouse, stone tile floors, sparse and mightily uncomfortable furniture, an iron black staircase with black railing to the loft and a light curtain to be drawn across the railing to prevent access view from the street. The cash card worked, always a good moment when traveling abroad. Re-read the NYT travel article from a few weeks ago and discovered the first restaurant we stumbled into for our first meal in BA was the one the article raved about, La Cabrera. We´d forgotten the portions -- an astonishing oversight -- huge for Dana Dee´s mediocre Caesar salad, made mediocre by the way too heavy amounts of dressing and huge for my bife de chorizo. One thing I hadn´t forgotten -- and this would be impossible to forget -- is the first taste, charred crisp on the outside and warm medium rare on the inside, thick, tender and instantly and deliciously recognizable as Argentine beef. What set Cabrera apart were the sides -- small metal appetizer-sized dishes of cold salads, a particularly fine slightly vinagrette potato salad, and hot vegetables, mashed potatoes, mashed carrots with raisins, a couple kinds of black beans and warm smooth and sweet applesauce. Since we paid with cash we got a 10 % discount (offered in some few restaurants) but even before that knockoff the chorizo bife, salad, chorizo sausage starter, beer and a glass of good house wine came to less than $20 for the two of us. I said to Dana Dee, "I don´t think we´re in New York anymore." Some one is practicing voice in the touwnhouse next door or beyond the patio -- she sounds like Bianca.
December 15 -- The first Argentina bottle of wine gets uncorked on day three. A Fincas Carcassone 1884 2005 Malbec a bit harsh going down, but, hey, I paid all of $3.50 for it. It so often comes down to food and drink here, especially on these warm summer nights. I bought a restaurant book, Restaurantes de Buesnos Aires, los Recomendados 2006, and find that more than a dozen are in Palermo Viejo or Palermo Hollywood. A dismal six block stretch along Honduras separates the two trendy places and access by all streets except Honduras and Paraguay is blocked by the Gral San Martin suburban train line. By blind luck with La Cabrera and by full intent with La Cupertina,we have already eaten at two of them. Cupertina today at noon was flat out fabulous probably the best empanadas I´ve ever eaten, dating back nearly forty years to the boarding house in Traiguen and those Sunday lunch treats. Baked to order, there are five varieties -- diced beef (far better than the usual carne molida option), chicken, ham and cheese, cheese and onion, and corn. The corn type we first encountered in Pucon in Chile, a fine new twist on empanadas then, and these topped them. They arrive crusty on the outside and with the contents thoroughly heated. The restaurant couldn´t be more basic, a few wobbly tables and a wooden serving block on which to cut and eat the empanadas. We didn´t order enough, three for the two of us. (They are very small, half the size I´m used to.) We have plenty of days ahead to remedy that and at 66 cents apiece there is hardly room for complaint. Midnight now -- a mild, lovely breeze shakes the leaves about the patio. Reminds of nights in Miami with the hotel window open in Coral Gables or listening to the wind from a bedroom in the Principal Officer´s residence in Havana. It is only three days and I have clearly fallen back into Argentina, as if no time had past, as if these young things that stroll the ludicrously named Palermo Soho were, as they are now, early 20-somethings instead of pre-schoolers when last I lived here. A would-be trendy store in Recoleta called itself General Store, purportedly after General George Store, whose faux name was printed under the muttonchopped face of Ambrose Burnside, a link in the chain of fools before Lincoln found Grant.
December 13 -- The apartment is in Palermo Viejo, on Gurruchaga, corner of El Salvador. A small loft apartment townhouse, stone tile floors, sparse and mightily uncomfortable furniture, an iron black staircase with black railing to the loft and a light curtain to be drawn across the railing to prevent access view from the street. The cash card worked, always a good moment when traveling abroad. Re-read the NYT travel article from a few weeks ago and discovered the first restaurant we stumbled into for our first meal in BA was the one the article raved about, La Cabrera. We´d forgotten the portions -- an astonishing oversight -- huge for Dana Dee´s mediocre Caesar salad, made mediocre by the way too heavy amounts of dressing and huge for my bife de chorizo. One thing I hadn´t forgotten -- and this would be impossible to forget -- is the first taste, charred crisp on the outside and warm medium rare on the inside, thick, tender and instantly and deliciously recognizable as Argentine beef. What set Cabrera apart were the sides -- small metal appetizer-sized dishes of cold salads, a particularly fine slightly vinagrette potato salad, and hot vegetables, mashed potatoes, mashed carrots with raisins, a couple kinds of black beans and warm smooth and sweet applesauce. Since we paid with cash we got a 10 % discount (offered in some few restaurants) but even before that knockoff the chorizo bife, salad, chorizo sausage starter, beer and a glass of good house wine came to less than $20 for the two of us. I said to Dana Dee, "I don´t think we´re in New York anymore." Some one is practicing voice in the touwnhouse next door or beyond the patio -- she sounds like Bianca.
December 15 -- The first Argentina bottle of wine gets uncorked on day three. A Fincas Carcassone 1884 2005 Malbec a bit harsh going down, but, hey, I paid all of $3.50 for it. It so often comes down to food and drink here, especially on these warm summer nights. I bought a restaurant book, Restaurantes de Buesnos Aires, los Recomendados 2006, and find that more than a dozen are in Palermo Viejo or Palermo Hollywood. A dismal six block stretch along Honduras separates the two trendy places and access by all streets except Honduras and Paraguay is blocked by the Gral San Martin suburban train line. By blind luck with La Cabrera and by full intent with La Cupertina,we have already eaten at two of them. Cupertina today at noon was flat out fabulous probably the best empanadas I´ve ever eaten, dating back nearly forty years to the boarding house in Traiguen and those Sunday lunch treats. Baked to order, there are five varieties -- diced beef (far better than the usual carne molida option), chicken, ham and cheese, cheese and onion, and corn. The corn type we first encountered in Pucon in Chile, a fine new twist on empanadas then, and these topped them. They arrive crusty on the outside and with the contents thoroughly heated. The restaurant couldn´t be more basic, a few wobbly tables and a wooden serving block on which to cut and eat the empanadas. We didn´t order enough, three for the two of us. (They are very small, half the size I´m used to.) We have plenty of days ahead to remedy that and at 66 cents apiece there is hardly room for complaint. Midnight now -- a mild, lovely breeze shakes the leaves about the patio. Reminds of nights in Miami with the hotel window open in Coral Gables or listening to the wind from a bedroom in the Principal Officer´s residence in Havana. It is only three days and I have clearly fallen back into Argentina, as if no time had past, as if these young things that stroll the ludicrously named Palermo Soho were, as they are now, early 20-somethings instead of pre-schoolers when last I lived here. A would-be trendy store in Recoleta called itself General Store, purportedly after General George Store, whose faux name was printed under the muttonchopped face of Ambrose Burnside, a link in the chain of fools before Lincoln found Grant.
A Thanksgiving Story
We volunteered at the Broadway Presbyterian Church for the morning, carving turkeys and setting up for the Thanksgiving dinner. A new crew of volunteers succeeded us and we headed later to Tout Va Bien, since there were only the three of us, making roasting a bird hardly worthwhile. Rain swept the city. We sat wet at one of their banquettes along the wall, next to a table of three men, one of them a musician at Radio City on a break between shows. They were there together for at least the second straight Thanksgiving. After a while, a single woman, mid-forties, came in and was seated on the other side of us. She ordered some champagne and after a few minutes mutually recognized one of the men from being in the restaurant at the same time last Thanksgiving. It´s a New York story too -- he invited this coincidental stranger to join them. She happily did and sometime later we left the four of them, enriching each others´ day, just what Thanksgiving should be.
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