Curry, Argentified

It was time. After months of moaning about this country’s lack of non-liquefied vegetables, whole grains, beans, spices … I’ve given in. Given up, rather. I’ve acquiesced to milanesas and white toast and gravy. To trans fats and canned corn. To everything I have ever stood for, really.

The site of my resignation was an un-notable café on Montevideo, a TV flickering in the corner and a single framed print on the buttery wall. My comrades? A pretty homogeneous bunch — each one a white male between 40 and 65, suit jacket neatly draped at his side, cell phone within spitting distance, annual earnings and fixed-term loans and short-term goals etched into his face.

Having encountered one too many freeze-dried spinach raviolis, I ordered the “pollo al curry,” curried chicken, knowing full well it wouldn’t be curried. Sure enough, the imposing white flesh was bathed in what could only be described as brown gravy, and Colonel Sanders himself could have dished up the puré de papas nestled alongside. But it was soothing, warm, well salted, easy on the stomach, everything one might say about surprisingly good hospital food. Better than most, for sure. Because boy oh boy, have I experienced “most.”

Just the day before, having dreamed of vegetables, I had embarked on a pursuit of a simple salad, my zeal that of a Spanish conquistador. My gold was anything green and can-free. My nemesis: mayonnaise. Yet my fortune, like those of the Gallegos, fell at the first sign of success, at the false friend that was an attractive-looking salad glistening in the case.

Half a bite in, I knew it was a mistake, a land not worth conquering. The colors were nothing more than an illusion. The broccoli, that succulent apparition of my dreams, water-logged and bitter. The lettuce unpleasantly reminiscent of weeds that grow in medians. The beets, those fantastic pink pickles I have happily massacred over a salad or two, were deprived of their bite, obscured by the ever-evil mayonnaise. Enough.

Such is how I found myself at the Café and Restaurant Valentina, marveling at the quantity of “salads” it took me to internalize a simple fact: In Argentina, the browner, the blander, the better.

My new doctrine in mind, I tentatively stepped into a kiosko. Anxious to fortify my ever-weakening bones, I perused the yogurt. The drinkable variety is relatively popular here, as people slowly awaken to the hunchbacked hordes around them. Tired of strawberry kiwi, I unearthed a new flavor hiding at the back. Just in for winter, Banana Dulce de Leche beckoned me with its outright grotesqueness. I couldn’t imagine why or how the combination would be appealing, but some inner force propelled me forward. Like the conquistador finally resigning to the ways of the natives, I passed over 2 pesos and slowly tore off the lid.

And?

It was delicious.