Jaunted

It's quite easy to get a bad steak dinner in BA -- certainly easier than finding a bad bagel in New York or an inedible omelette in Lyon. Here's a myth that travel mags like to rehash every so often: the worse the decor, the better the steak. Think about that one for a moment. See the fat, glum-looking owner behind the bar, the one who hasn't fumigated himself in over six months, let alone his eaterie? Well, the reason you're sitting on and eating off plastic-moulded garden furniture while some fairly pooey zephyrs assault you from the "unisex" bathroom is not because said proprietor lacks class and ambition, but because 90 per cent of his outgoings go towards paying the salary of the Thomas Keller-trained genius he's employed to man the grill. Got it?

(It goes without saying that these places are often more fun and have better onda (vibes) than the posh joints with their flush toilets and stuff.)

After soccer, Porteños' second favorite pastime is winding up foreign journalists, hence the bit about how they talk to their psychiatrists about beef, a gem that appeared in a recent article published in a highly respected travel mag and written by a highly respected hack. Now, I know a lot of screws up, I'm drawn to them and vice versa. And none of them talk to their shrinks about steak. They talk about the normal stuff -- family problems, money crises, schtupping the new oral hygienist at their highly successful dental practice, and so on. They're not weird -- or at least no weirder than New Yorkers.

Most of the steak obsessives in BA are foreigners, expats, genuinely weird people. We don't take steak for granted. For a middle class rube like myself, steak was always a treat, reserved for special occasions like graduating high school or going three nights in a row without wetting the bed. Five years in BA and I still get a thrill when a bife de chorizo (sirloin) the size of a good dictionary arrives at the table. Along with the cheap cigarettes, it's one of the things that keeps me here.

And that's why I was quite happy to eat three huge steak dinners in the last 24 hours for your benefit. I wouldn't recommend it to everyone. I'm not feeling too well myself. There's some stuff going on down there that shouldn't be going on, and some other stuff that should be going on that isn't. I've got a pack of Ex-Lax and a bag of mixed dried fruits on one side of my PC and a shot glass of milk of magnesia on the other. There are some senna leaves brewing in the kitchen. I'm the Jack Portnoy of travel blogging. Talk about writer's block...

We started at 9pm last night (about the earliest Porteños can bring themselves to eat) at La Cabrera, a much hyped and generally brilliant parrilla in hip Palermo Viejo. It has problems. Tables are squished up against each other, the staff are a bit mechanical, most of the clientele are foreigners break down into two groups, one that coos endlessly about the size of the steaks (always huge), the other comprising big guys from New Jersey who say things like, "Call that a steak? You shoudda seen..." etc. I had an ojo de bife, cooked rare, served with a gazillion side orders you don't ask for but just arrive, a flotilla of carbohydrates plus strange things like pickled onions. A gooey provoleta (grilled cheese) brings the projected date of my triple bypass forward a few weeks. A cheap but reliable Malbec, probably San Telmo. Total price for two: US$40. And we could easily have fed four.

Today, lunch. The family asado or barbecue, a Sunday lunch ritual for many Porteño families, a bit like Friday night shabbat but with less prayers and more blood sausage. Spend more than a week in BA and there's a good chance you'll get an invite to one of these blow outs. I've prepared around 150 of them since I landed here, after serving a two year apprenticeship under my father in law who's done thousands. There are several strict rules, all good. No women near the barbecue. Wine consumed before during and after the barbecue. Any part of the cow can and should be cooked, including chinchulines (tripe), riñones (kidney) and -- jewel in the glandular crown -- molleja (sweetbread). The asador gets a ritual round of applause, even if he set fire to the shed. The wine should be of they type that is virtually undrinkable under any other circumstances, calmed down a bit with ice and soda. If it rains, mama prepares her top-secret-passed-down-the-generations ravioli recipe. Like I said, they're not stupid here, nothing like my father and his occasional barbecue effort in deepest wettest England: "I said I was going to do a bloody barbecue and so I'm going to do a bloody barbecue; just hold the umbrella and catch any sausages that fly off..."

After a long siesta (which sounds much more poetic than alcohol-induced blackout), we finished out colon assault at one of our favourite steakhouses, Gardelito. It's nothing like La Cabrera: less tourists, cheekier waiters, a general embracing of chaos, one of the most imaginatively bad wine lists in the city, nice flea market decor, the kind of place where everyone knows your name and no one gets your order right. It's about half the price of La Cabrera and they don't rush you through your meal, however long the queue. We're pretty busted by now but still have room for a long, crispy tube of tripe, a couple of chorizos, and some hunks of charred chicken.

Bye for now, the senna tea's kicking in...

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