Out of town visitors and parillada (Ken)

My sister, Kathy, and her husband, Harvey, live in the Bay Area in San Francisco. They have some friends of 25 years, Steve and Jan.

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Steve and Jan no longer live in San Francisco, but have moved to Reno, Neveda where Steve is an oncologist and Jan, like Helen, is pharmacist.

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My sister told us Steve and Jan were headed this way for a one-night stop over in Bueos Aires on their way south to Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego. We passed a few emails back and forth with dates and phone numbers and the like. Yesterday, Steve called and said they were in town and asked us to get together para la cena. Well, as many of you know, Porteños don´t even think of going to dinner before 9:00. So, we made plans to meet at the café across from out departemento at 8:00.

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Steve and Jan arrived by taxi. It was pretty easy to figure out whom each other was. We were the people sitting at the outside table looking for someone to arrive in a tax, and they were the people in the taxi looking for someone looking for someone to arrive in a taxi.

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We greeted, and met, and had a drink at the café. From there we discussed options. Because Helen and I have been here three weeks, we were the default experts. We suggested that the group of us go for a traditional Argentine parillada. Since they were only to be here for one night, we thought we´d give them a cultural experience.

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We arrived at the restaurant at about 9:00 and were the only people there. The restaurant advertises "show en vivo" and that, as usual, consists of a very handsome young Porteño with a quasi-karaoke machine. It is not at all bad. These kids can really sing--and they are cute. I have probably seen six or eight of these guys and any one of them could successfully front a really good band in the US. I don´t know what they are paid, but I have been looking at the price of musical instruments, PA equipment, and such. It is about twice the cost of the same in the USA and these people only make a third of what we make. That makes it six times harder, at minimum, to put a rig together.

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Anyway, back to the restaurant . . .

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I picked out a very nice Malbec, and we ordered the parillada and two pasta dishes. The plate of grilled things arrived and we dug in. Oh, yes, there were some pieces of beef and chicken--mere childs play. We were here to eat with the big boys: tripe, kidneys, lymph glands, intestines, liver, and blood sausage.

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Adventurous as we were, Steve and I at least tried everything. Or, we tried to try everything. I don´t want to say anything negative about the traditional cuisine of my Argentine hosts, but . . .

I think I´ll stick to bife de lomo and bife de chorizo. I´m not saying I won´t try it again, but I don´t feel the need to choose it again. It was a good thing we ordered that pasta.

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Steve and Jan are back a week from today for one more night before heading back north. They said we´d get together again and they´d tell us about their trip farther south. If we have not scared them away forever, we´ll take them someplace safe this time . . . and stick to steaks.