Down-home empanadas

Those who know me well know that when I travel, I do like to get with the peeps. I don't flatter myself that I'm either fluent enough in any foreign language nor personable enough to truly penetrate to the lived-in experiences of people who have lives very different from my own. But I do think it's fair to say that when I'm abroad I like to eat where the locals eat, ride on local transport, etc. Travel for me does not need to be a series of hot-shower/clean-sheet hotels.

So, after 2 1/2 weeks, it was high time I got me some street food. The tourist/traveller restuarants of BsAs work so hard to project a cosmopolitan, everywhere-and-nowhere air, and succeed, for the most part. But this is South America, after all, and I was craving a bit of the comida tipica, if you know what I mean.

For no discernible reason, I stopped in this (completely empty) empanada joint in the business district on a walk home from a haircut. Now, while I am savvy enough to notice that no one is eating in a restaurant, and I'm smart enough to know that this information is most likely life-preserving in some regard, I'm somehow not wired to turn around and walk out of a deserted establishment. It's like a learning disorder-- I know I have a problem in the way I process information I receive from the world, but I can't change my behavior.

It turns out I am fated to die in a ptomaine-laced BsAs empanada joint. My whole life has boiled down to this moment. So be it-- write my obit.

I approach the counter, and this lovely 50+-year-old man roars at me in Spanish-- ¿Do I want an empanada? (the Argentine answer to pizza-- a stuffed pizza dough pastry with meat, vegetables and/or cheese inside, baked +400º for a luscious crispy crust.) Oh, si, I say.

I make my choices, and then he says something garbled really, really loudly. The man speaks like his tongue is too big for his mouth. ¿Como? I ask. Using the tried-and-true method of talking to hapless foreigners the world over, he asks a second time even louder, bellowing ¿Caliente? Do I want them heated up? Oh, si I say, nodding and smiling, and I sit down.

He is so delighted to have me in his restaurant, you'd think I was a movie star. He makes a big show of coming over to my table, wiping it down, serving my water. He is over the moon that I come from California.

He retreats to the back which gives me enough time to really drink in the decor.

What I'm going to show you next is a part of what made this whole encounter a story in first place.

Let me drive home the point that I did nothing to this first photo. My camera did something weird-- ghost in the machine, the digital equivalent of a paper jam. It chopped the image into rectangles, developed them at different saturations, and then rearranged them into an arty, almost jazzy tableau. Chair legs on the ceiling-- hmmmm. Making this place (somehow) look like somewhere you'd actually want to spend a meal. But then I will show a second photo of a close-up of what the wall looked like for real:

*Fabulous!*

*Funky*

It's worth a second to drink in all that you see here. This really is an actual wall where someone has taken the time to:

1. Hang wide two random pictures of pizza, somewhat crookedly
2. Lean one head-shot of Carlos Gardel, the near-godman singer of Argentinian tango songs from the 1920s-30s-- That particular image of him is like Sinatra's mugshot in NYC pizza joints- you see it everywhere
3. Set two completely dead potted ficus plants, indifferently spaced
4. Place off-center a black-and-white photo of the Three Stooges

What does all this mean, I wonder? What dining experience is one hoping to impart to one's customers?

A man walks in carrying boxes and says to the roaring man, "Buon Giorno." It takes a second for this to register, the fact that this is a foreign phrase, foreign even to what already seems foreign to me here. The roaring man says something mouth-full-of-marblesish, not Italian, not Spanish, not really anything I can fathom.

I find myself relaxing. My mind is open and empty, like Buddhist practice: Whatever happens next, what if it were neither good nor bad?

But it turns out what's next is lunch, two savory little browned pastry pockets, one with stewed sun-dried tomatoes, basil and mozzarella cheese, one with spicy beef. They are both...delightful. Whatever else, the roaring man can cook.

He watches me eat, and it gives me great pleasure to show him how good his food tastes to me. ¿Rico, no? Sabrosa, I concur, meaning every inch of it. He broadcasts the ingredients: tomatoes, basil, cheese. Yes, yes, I say. It's all there.

Then he mashes some more at me, until it is clear from his hand signals, he's telling me he doesn't hear very well. I'm guessing he hardly hears at all. "Yo tambien," I say, and then hack through my free-wheeling bastard Spanish version of how I might say "I rely a lot on reading lips." I am quite certain he doesn't understand a syllable of it, since it probably wouldn't have made any sense even if he could hear me.

I pay my 13 pesos ($3.25 US), give him a 2 peso tip, and head off on my way. I hope I made his day a tenth as rich as he made mine.