You see, en realidad, there are two types of asado. You can put it all on the grill, Ramiro explained, nearly tipping over his café as he swept his arms open wide, his imaginary grill big enough to hold a half-dozen pampa-fed steers. Or you can stretch it over a fire, slowly intoxicating the splayed cow with the smoke, added the man ahead of us in line.
And like that, the two Argentines spiraled into a dizzyingly carnivorous conversation for a Saturday morning at the gas station. United incidentally, the countrymen regaled each other with tales of memorable parrillas and that one perfect intestine, grilled to perfection. And sure enough, even before the coffee was paid for, the never-exhausted topic of empanadas had been breached.
We were kilometers away from a kiosk, basking in the open pampa, yet one thing was no different from being trapped inside city walls — the glorification of all things meat. The official purpose of our journey was to venerate the patron saint of Argentina, the Virgin of Luján, but per usual, a large percentage of the venerating went towards products of blood and bone.
To be fair, it did consume a lot of energy listening to our overly excitable tour guide, transforming his 12 years of English language education into tangible evidence of the hazards of an Argentine accent imposed onto, well anything other than Argentine Spanish. His use of the word “moreover” was exemplary, though, and he proved quite adept at stripping the Virgin of her blue cloak, revealing her scandalous under-cloak. Horrifyingly blasphemous, to be sure, but it made for fine entertainment. Yet the high point of the tour came when he whipped out his sleek camera phone and began snapping away, our slightly confused American smiles captured forever.
But Ramiro, our exchange program employee assigned to shepherd us on our cultural journey, could care less about the church and its endless stalls of rosaries and candy apples, for the essence of parrilla was in the air. And deftly, it weaved its way into our hearts. Settling into a table basking in the fall sun, we contemplated our hunger. That whole body and blood of Christ thing, while it nurtured our souls, didn’t quell that vast emptiness that only beef innards can satiate. The beaming waiter regaled us with stories of his “friend” in California, a once-tourist who had mailed photos of the two men grinning amid a cloud of meat smoke, the envelope addressed to the “restaurant on the terrace by the river” in Luján. Clearly, we weren’t in Buenos Aires anymore.
Out came the empanadas, out come the bread, and, with a shake and a flourish, out came the chimichurri. The latter, a vinaigrette-esque sauce with tomatoes, peppers, onions, and spices, is traditionally Argentine. Because, although spices are strictly prohibited in the majority of dishes, some culinary idiosyncrasy upholds their use in the creation of chimichurri. So we drank up the offerings, still radiating from the Virgin’s healing presence, and savored the slight sensation of heat on the tongue. Then, they arrived.
“They” being the spitting, splattering parrillas, thumped onto the table as if to taunt us. And as such began the battle of our lives. The more we ate, the louder the grills sizzled, the intestines and kidneys and who knows what else talking back to us, bemoaning our incompetent stomachs. There were steaks and ribs and chickens and sausages and steak stuffed with oregano, but there all familiar territory ended. We were to eat first and ask later, Ramiro instructed us, advice both smart and frightening.
Some hours and a few flans later, our hair drenched in smoke and our bodies coated with a film of grease, we shakily stood up. We had survived. Waving our waiter adios, we rolled back toward the plaza in slightly painful, semi-euphoric states. After all, the Virgin was smiling down on us.
And a good thing, too — who knows what might have happened if we'd attempted that feat on our own.
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