Last night my roomate Emily and I went to a Puerto Cerrada - a "closed door". These are small resteraunt type things that people run from their homes. In Buenos Aires, these originated after the 2001 economic crisis when chefs were out of work and had no where to cook but their own houses. Now, it is a hip new thing that is coming back into fashion, and there was one conveniently located about a ten minutes walk from our downs. Jueves a la Mesa is run by two women - one American and one Argentine and it is totally vegetarian food that they cook using spices (!) and locally found vegetables, etc. The idea is that you and 12-13 strangers sit at one dinner table and talk to each other.
If you know me, you know I am apprehensive about meeting new people, a terribly picky eater and all around weird person to get a meal with but it actually turned out quite well! The other people at the event were very interesting and the food was "west african" (aka we had peanut and banana curry that was actually spicy -which is not normal in Argentina - nothing here is spicy except foreign food!). We shared the table with an older couple from Switzerland who were moving on from BsAs to go to Lima to visit the womans family there, a couple from Canada who has spent the past two months in Chile and Argentina, a Puerto Rican man living in Virginia in BsAs studying Tango, a young girl from Finland (she was exactly what my stereotypic view of a finnish girl would be, very blonde and very smiley and was very friendly and enthusiastic), and a young newly wed couple with the most amazing story ever (he is a journalist, she is a pediatrician who does international aid work, they met in afghanistan and did long distance for 2 years, meeting up every six weeks in various exotic locations before getting engaged in india and marrying in california and moving to DC what is that even real life?) Then there were four kids who walked in a few minutes late and as soon as I saw them I said to Emily "those kids go to NYU, watch" and guess who was right? I swear to god, my NYU-dar is better than my gay-dar. It's intense.
Anyway, basically the way it works is that you all sit around a big table and then the woman who runs it explains what she cooks, etc. And then you eat and chat. The people there were really fascinating and everyone talked to everyone except the kids at the end who only really spoke to themselves but whatever. It was really interesting to hear about everyones lives and how and why they got to Buenos Aires.
The host is friends with a bartender at a bar down the road and had received coupons for free drinks there. Emily, the NYUCrew and I headed there. The bartender only wanted to give us beer for the coupons so I gave mine to the other girl but then the bartender felt bad for me and gave me a vodka-lemonade for free. The other kids left shortly but Emily and I sat there for a long time talking about everything, really. It was really interesting to hear about her life and friends back in Norway, and what she was taught and how everything works over there. We talked about how being in another place forces you to not think of your own culture as neutral (aka destroys ethnocentrism if you are a critical thinker) and makes you think of aspects of your home life as strange. It must be interesting for her to come from a very white affluent and stable nation to Buenos Aires where things are so so so different.
Anyway then it was 3 am so we came home because we both had class in the morning.
On another food note - I went earlier this week to the only Bagel shop in all of Buenos Aires! It's a small hole in the wall and all the bagels are sandwhiches all named after different parts of New York. The menu has a historical explanation of the bagel, the yiddish word for bagel, and tells you that you can buy them en todos las esquinas en Nueva York =] The bagel guy was beautiful so of course we chatted him up and he thought it was funny that we eat them with just cream cheese for breakfast. Also, for anyone interested, the bagels were pretty horrible but it was funny nonetheless.
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