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I recently went on a taxi adventure with Bs As-based food writer Layne Mosler.
A couple times a month, she hops into a taxi and asks the driver to take her to one of his (yet to be her) favorite places to eat.
Here is her write-up of our shared adventure.
I had a lovely time in the Jardín Botánico. It’s three blocks from my new pad, full of young people in love and stray cats hunting down new curious treasures.
I wrote postcards.
The garden has a French feel.
On the green: extra green from a spring shower.
Spring flowers.
Cats prowl the gardens.
Today Francis headed back to LA after a successful internship with Clarín.
She worked in the Ciudad section and published some great pieces, like this one on how tourists get charged higher prices, even though it’s against the law.
I was sad to see her go. But with Silvana, we gave her a final despedida, in Havana with cafe con leché and alfajores! Yum!
Havana, near the corner of our (former) apartment
Cafe con leche + alfajor de nuez
Las chicas yanquis
Hasta luego, Francis!
My Saturday night plan was to meet up with some friends who via email announced a group dinner at Hanan, a Middle Eastern restaurant in Villa Crespo.
I went, but did not find my friends. It was a night of desencuetros, it seems.
I walked four blocks and found a locutorio. No answer on the cell phone.
I returned to the restaurant, in the pouring rain and got soaked. Still no familiar faces at the tables.
But with an empty stomach and the smell of yummy food, I decided to take myself out on a date.
I sit and order kebbeh al horno and rice.
The kebbeh was not the best, but good. The rice, a little soupy.
The belly dancer was pretty good.
Dancing at Hanan.
I even got up and danced a little myself.
And the halawa with pistacchios, delicious! The morsels of sesame or tahini based sweetness took me back to Austin, where Maryam introduced me to halawa.
The cafe, wonderful as well. I turned it over to try and see my fortune.
I think I saw a dancer in the silt.
What do you see?
Dancing in my future?
This weekend I went out to a peña in the Facultad de Medicina.
A peña is a party of folklore dancing and music from the north, northwest region of Argentina, like Jujuy and Tucumán.
I wondered where all the hippies came from. Walking the streets of Buenos Aires, you wouldn’t think there are so many guys with beards and long hairs and women who wear loose clothing and go without makeup.
But they were there, in the cafeteria hall of the campus.
Outside, it
Outside it’s a gorgeous building. Inside the hallways are covered with posters, mostly calling for the defense of public education and other student causes.
The peña really got going at about 3 a.m. Several local folk bands took the stage and the hall filled with hundreds of people.
A folk band from Quilmes takes the stage.
It seems peñas have been become fashionable in Argentina. Se pusieron de moda.
I’m glad I took that one chacarera class in Austin a couple of years ago. I was able to join in the dancing and not look too foolish. (Video to come.)
Folk dancing is a lot of fun and has a group dynamic. Guys and gals make two lines and the steps are a series of advances and returns. The couples make romantic circles around each other. No touching until the end of the song when they come close to an embrace. But not close enough to touch.
Some of the dances, like the Argentine samba, use handkerchiefs that the couples wave and twist as they flit and float toward and then away from each other.
I asked one guy in our group if the folk dance is as machista, or more, than the tango. I thought he would know: He is a folk dance instructor. He said the folk dancing is not machista at all.
Yet it the dance of gauchos, those wild and fierce Argentine cowboys who roamed the pampas like legendary Martín Fierro.
So I have my doubts.
Friday we visited the campus of Universidad de San Andrés in San Isidro, a suburb to the north of Buenos Aires.
The young university, started in 1986, models itself after colleges in the United States. Its master’s program in journalism is affiliated with Columbia. (Another reason why I’m here.)
I’ll try to post some photos of the Universidad de Buenos Aires. The colleges are very different.
San Isidro is a particularly well off neighborhood. It is totally different from the hustle, bustle and grit of Bs As. It’s calm, peaceful, secluded, green, tranquil. In addition to the university, San Andrés has elementary and prep schools. The latter can be somewhat like Beverly Hills 90210, I was told.
We visited with Hernán Galperín and Marcelo Leiras, who directs the political science, international relations and communications programs at San Andrés.
We had lunch at a marina. San Isidro and the campus border the Río de la Plata.
Conversation covered Clarín, journalism in Latin America and the presidential race in the United States. Argentines are so interested in the race that you might think it was their own election.
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