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El sabor de Argentina

Editor’s note:

The LatinaVoz.com will offer an occasional series from people living throughout the Spanish-speaking world. This month’s excerpted travelogue comes from Buenos Aires, where Mary Herzog, her husband Kirk Andrews and their children Charlotte (age 9) and Tim (age 8), have been living in Argentina since last June.

Mary and Kirk decided to take their children to Buenos Aires so that they would become fluent in Spanish and receive the incalculable benefit of living within another culture. Mary took a leave of absence from her job as a county psychologist and Kirk put his Orange County psychotherapy practice on hold in order to study Spanish, psychology and dance in Buenos Aires. They love the big city opportunities, the barrio warmth and friendliness and, of course, the Argentine beef. 

Meat

The butcher shop is a block and a half from the house.  The encargado or apartment manager told Kirk this was the best place for meat in the neighborhood.  The butcher shares a little shop with a fruit and vegetable seller. You wait in perpendicular lines because you have to pay separately.  The hardier vegetables and fruits are in wooden shipping cartons stacked vertically for display. The butcher’s line forms in front of the refrigerator filled with strawberries, arugula, papaya, avocados and lettuce.  The vegetable clerks gently jostle the ladies in line to fill the orders.

I face the cold case with hunks of meat presented in rows, and white enameled basins with fish, liver and ground beef. The butcher is tall, white-haired, barehanded, and serious. He swipes the big knife with a cloth and then draws it against the steel, just twice. He stabs a short knife into the wooden cutting board and braces the meat against it so that the slices fall in quarter-inch cascades. He lays the slices on the scale, shoves them in a small plastic bag, carefully ties the ends and hands it over to her. 

The next woman chats him up as he goes to get a whole chicken. He slaps it down in front of a saw with a vertical blade.  I can see the teeth before he starts it up.  The chicken is in eight pieces with six quick moves. I check: He has all his fingers, even all these years. He weighs it on the same scale and wipes with the same cloth. He asks, “Que mas, señora?”  He shows her two or three pieces of meat. She chooses one. The same two flicks along the edge of the steel, before he slices. He takes the pencil from behind his ear, adds in his head, writes the amount, comes around to take her money and digs in the cash register to give her some coins. 

The shop is busy. I worry he will be impatient with my questions and my bad Spanish. I turn around and ask the woman behind me what kind of meat to buy for “planchar.”  She has one good eye; the other is blind, hidden in her skull. She seems startled I would talk to her, but rallies and gives me an answer and helpfully repeats it several times.

I look back as the butcher bends down and picks a scrap off the floor, tossing it into a container I can’t see. He grabs a handful of ground beef and weighs it, then weighs some chicken breasts. Swipe, slice, write, dig.

It is my turn. I stammer out an explanation about needing meat for  “planchar.”  He asks me how much.  I am ready for this: “Medio kilo.” He presents it to me for inspection, I find this touchingly ridiculous, but feel pleased to be included as a señora. As I leave, I stop to pet the tabby cat hanging around inside the shop. She obliges me but not for long. Behind me:  Swipe, slice, write, dig. Swipe, slice, write, dig. 

I walk home, muttering about E. coli, obsessive Americans, salmonella, healthy immune systems, toxoplasmosis, when in Rome…