Day 41: September 24, 2007 In Salta
Trip Start
Aug 15, 2007
1
41
202
Trip End
Mar 01, 2008
Salta,
Argentina
Monday, September 24, 2007
After uploading my daily blog feed, I went right to work on the course development. I'm finally out of the theoretical part and into the applied section. Some of it was new to me so it was fun learning, or at least learning it better. The morning flew by. I was hungry so I cooked a hamburger in the apartment. In the afternoon, I finally figured out how to copy things directly from a .pdf file. This will speed things up dramatically because I can now copy equations directly instead of having to build them. I knew it could be done but hadn't poked around enough to remember how to do it.
Elena called at 7:00 and was in El Centro with Carlos. We agreed to meet at the Plaza Central at 8:30. I took the bus into town and arrived 15 minutes early. I called Liz and my parents on my cell phone from the park. All were happy to hear from me but I couldn't hear them so well because of the background din. I hung up just as Elena and Carlos arrived. We chatted for a few minutes and then he went to catch his bus home.
Elena and I decided to try a new restaurant so we walked east on Caseros and found a place call El Charrúa between the Iglesia de San Francisco and El Convento. It was excellent! We tried our standard first meal at a new place: a 1/2 kilo bife de chorizo(a tender, juicy steak) with salad and fries plus chorizos (pork sausages) and chicken empanadas, followed by a dessert of chocolate ice cream and dulce de leche (caramel). This was accompanied by breads and salsas, wine, coke, and club soda. We only purchased one portion of each item, which is perfectly acceptable, and both walked away full and satiated. The total bill, with tip, came to 71 pesos or $22.65.
We caught a cab and went to pick up our laundry at 10:45. It was still drying so we had to wait for half an hour. The guy at the desk called us another cab and we were back at the apartment by 11:30. We called it a night and went to bed.
Yesterday, I wrote about Argentine wines so I should round that out and discuss my observations about Argentine restaurants. Naturally, there are several levels of eateries, each catering to different economic classes. Over the years, I've eaten in hundreds of these places at all levels.
Because Italians are the largest ethnic group in Argentina, restaurants have a distinctly Italian bent. Almost all of them offer a variety of pastas and many also serve pizza for the main course. They all have a variety salads but the choice of salad dressings is limited to olive oil and vinegar or corn oil and vinegar.
The main meat dishes include a variety of steaks, several chicken dishes, and chicken and veal milanesas which are breaded meats. Most places also offer a parrillada which is an assortment of meat cuts, usually, beef, pork, and chicken, chorizos, morcillas (blood sausages)and a variety of used cow parts such as the thyroid, ovaries, kidneys, diaphram, udder, liver, and brains. Many restaurants serve fish, pork, lamb, and goat as well. Occasionally a place will serve rabbit or llama. In Patagonia, lamb and mutton are more typical main courses. Along the coast a wide variety of excellent seafoods are available. My favorite is the conger eel. Calamari, octopus, and shellfish are other favorites. Many other excellent fish are also available.
Tips are usually 5% but I always leave 10%, to the horror of my Argentine friends. I get great service on my return visits and make a lot of friends with the wait staff. Most of the people working as waiters are professional; all are very polite; and many have worked at the same establishment for years. In the past, all were men but I've been surprised this year to see that women are finally breaking that barrier. Almost all of the places we've tried have at least one women on the wait staff.
The food is great. The service is good. The restaurants are clean and often have a pleasant ambiance. My only criticism is that they are all the SAME. No attempt is made to break the mold. Almost every restaurant offers bife de chorizo, bide de lomo, lomo Eduardo VII, milanesa napolitana, milanesa completa, pollo suprema de Maryland, etc. It is almost a chant. Almost all restaurants in a given city have about the same price, which is always highest in Buenos Aires.
There is a dearth of ethnic food in Argentina. There are Chinese and Japanese restaurants in Buenos Aires and I hear that Salta now has a Chinese restaurant. About 10 years ago an enterprising Mexican opened a restaurant in Buenos Aires. It was the only Mexican restaurant in the city of > 10 million inhabitants. A standard plate of enchiladas or burritos went for $30 and the place was always packed. Argentines have a preconception that all Mexican food is very spicy and are apparently delighted to find out that that is not the case.
So, as great as the food is here, I think there are still a few big markets in which a lot of money could be made in the restaurant business. Introducing the variety of salad dressings that we enjoy in the U.S. would be successful in supermarkets and restaurants once the concept of new tastes caught on. Ethnic restaurants would, I think, be an instant success, breaking the litany of dishes that are offered by almost all restaurants.
