“Vivir para Comer” – The Argentine Asado, Café Tortoni and Other Ways to Eat your Way Through Buenos Aires

It was mid-week when I finally realized why the vast number of food critics in the world today choose this profession. To venture to a new place, meander amongst the crowds and take in a few sights before working your way from restaurant to restaurant, market to market, bakery to bakery, almacen to almacen (the Spanish for small shop, often specializing in cold meats for sandwiches or “fiambres”) is quite a spectacular existence. Aside from, of course, working exceedingly hard at improving our Castellano skills, we have been taking the time to not only make new friends and take in our beautiful surroundings, but also to try the things most typical of a porteño diet.

It was just this week that we were invited to a typical Argentine Asado, or barbeque, at the house of a classmate of mine. The fact that he happens to be Brazilian himself changes nothing about the quintessentially Argentine feast that he hosted this past Tuesday evening. Together after class, the fifteen or fourteen of us avid Spanish students trooped back to charming Almagro, after pausing for a moment in front of La Casa Rosada to take a touristy, yet obligatory photo. Perhaps it was more of a “Before and After” exercise, because by the end of the evening I was certainly feeling the pinch of my waistband ever so slightly more than in that moment in front of the grandiose [pink] government building. Nevertheless, a grand time was had. Thanks to the husband of a classmate who happens to be a porteño, and thus knows how to work the Parilla (or, grill) particularly well, we feasted upon mounds of fresh chorizos, two or three different cuts of prime Argentine beef and a delectably grilled helping of Provolone cheese with herbs, which was by far some of the most amazing cheese I have ever tasted. In a delightfully informal manner, the group crowded around the large outdoor table, conversing in Castellano (wine in hand) and picked at the delicious dishes placed in the centre of la mesa, one after the other with plastic forks – the serious lack of plastic plates seemed to bother no one. After the event, I was informed however that it had been a fairly ‘tame’ version of an Argentine Asado, due to the fact that it ended close to the apparantly early hour of 11pm (the “Quilombo” we at this point had no idea we would host in our living room a few days later was quite the opposite).

As a sort of intermission between different types of Argentine cuisine, we decided to make an expedition to the MALBA – El Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires. Having heard so many good things about the grand white building on Avenida Figueroa Alcorta, we ventured there after class with two friends. The museum currently boasts a large and splendid exhibit of the vast majority of Andy Warhol’s most famous and acclaimed pieces. The exhibition which runs until February, entitled “Andy Warhol, Mr. America” wonderfully lays out the different stages that the Pennsylvanian went through in terms of his art, and how his views on the United States gradually developed. We meandered through his fascination with commercial items – the infamous Campbell’s Soup collection, on to his near obsession with the matter of death that he unveils in his Electric Chair series, then onto politics and his interest in the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963 and its somewhat excessive manifestation by the media. After this dark phase, Warhol once again picked up his enthusiasm for American products and advertisements using vivid colors and famous faces once more, illustrating his sentiments voiced to Glenn O’Brian in June of ’77:

Glenn O’Brian: Do you believe in the American Dream?
Andy Warhol: I don’t, but I think we can make some money out of it.

Viewing Warhol’s most important pieces [again] in Buenos Aires was a peculiar sensation, as on other floors of the Malba one is surrounded by the great works of classically Latin artists, such as two of Mexico’s greatest treasures Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, as well as Argentines Alejandro Xul Solar and Antonio Berni, to name but a few. However, after two or three hours, we left Mr. Warhol in drag at the door of the museum and moved on to explore more of the Paris of the South.

Being consistent with the week’s motif of cultural education, we joined the waiting line to enter El Gran Café Tortoni – the oldest and most talked-about (and inevitably, most written about) cafeteria in the whole of Argentina. Opened in 1858 by Frenchman Touan, the café has ever since been a hot-spot for renowned artists, intellectuals and politicians. I delighted in viewing the walls upon walls of framed photographs of Argentina’s most celebrated writer and poet Jorge Luis Borges along with the iconic face of Argentine Tango, Carlos Gardel, both sitting in Café Tortoni on many different occasions, sipping on cafecitos and snacking on freshly-made facturas. Located on the Parisian style boulevard of Avenida de Mayo, Tortoni is not only historically popular amongst Argentines. The café boasts Spanish playwright and poet Federico Garcia Lorca and the King of Spain as some of its other celebrity customers from years ago. Hilary Clinton was also spotted having a pleasant coffee break in the colonial style Café in 1997. This Thursday afternoon however, we paused there only briefly for a cafecito and a tostado (Argentine toasted sandwich) but it was long enough to take in the beautiful surroundings and ambience of one of Buenos Aires’ most charming and historical locations. The fact that Tortoni also hosts exceedingly popular Tango shows by night is perhaps an excuse to return in the not-too-distant future.