Nonna Bianca – ice cream parlour – San Telmo

(Photo: BuenosAiresDreams)

Nonna Bianca

What? Ice cream parlour

Where? Estados Unidos 425 y Defensa

No website / Sun – Thurs: 9am – Midnight; Fri – Sat: 9am – 2am / Mapa interactivo

 

Briefly:

This ice cream parlour (heladería) is the best value in Buenos Aires. You can buy a ¼ kilo (un cuarto) of deliciousness for around half the price it would cost you in BA’s smugger spots (Persico and Freddo). They apparently have 80 flavours including, vitally, peanut butter (mantecol). Don’t expect warm and fuzzy customer service.

 

Less briefly:

Up on the wall are about four thousand different flavours, which makes choosing what to get a minor ordeal. I usually ask my friends what they’re thinking, agonise over what they tell me, then ignore it and get the same as always: dulce de leche con brownie, banana split, and mantecol. Sometimes, if needs must, I switch out the banana split with something healthy, like maracuyá (passion fruit).

They seem to create a new flavour every week and then keep it, regardless of whether people actually like it or not. If other companies acted like this, then we would still have Lamb and Mint Sauce, German Bratwurst Sausage, and Marmite-flavoured crisps.

Some of the original flavours are quite good, like ginger and orange; others are quite atrocious, like mate and cream – just because drinking mate is a national pastime, that does not mean you can eat it with cream, just like you can’t eat gin and tonic with cream in England, nor Bud Light with cream in the States.

Crumpled behind the till is Blanca Real, the owner of the heladería, who must be pushing into her eighties, and has reached that wonderfully enlightened stage of life when you stop caring for social etiquette. Some people start farting or swearing in public, others start being cantankerous just for the sake of it; Blanca ignores you, then continues to ignore you, then acts affronted when you try and buy ice cream. She reminds me of a more aloof version of Roz from Monsters Inc.

I spent many afternoons, sometimes with company, sat on the wooden picnic tables at the front, made of that light Patagonian Cypress that can either look wholesome and homely, or look fake, as if it were the building material of choice for Disneyworld. We would dip our little spoons into the polystyrene tubs of ice cream (actually gelato, for pedants) and make audible satisfied noises: “Mmmmm, Oooooorr, Ooooh, yeeeeah.”

Apart from the picnic tables at the front, the layout of Nonna Bianca is quite odd. There seems to be some kind of deserted internet café up a set of stairs, and under the stairs are rows of tables shrouded in gloom. I once saw a couple sitting in the gloom and assumed they must be watching porn together or sniffing snuff – the only possible explanations for sitting there.

About half of the flavours on offer. Here you can see the all-conquering triumvirate of dulce de leche con brownie, banana split and mantecol.  (Photo: Dream!Go!Live!)

The Gibraltar – pub – San Telmo

(Photo: encounterargentina)

The Gibraltar

What? Pub

Where? Peru 895 y Estados Unidos

Menu (English) / Website (English) / Everyday: Noon – 4am / Mapa interactivo

 

Briefly:

During the day, this is the closest you will get to a proper English pub in South America. Wood-paneled walls, dark leather sofas, a TV playing Premier League football, a pool table, fish and chips, a Full English Breakfast, and even ale. At night the music is generally too loud and there are too many people, like Wetherspoons.

 

Less briefly:

Whenever Arsenal were playing on a Sunday I would drag along an American companion to The Gibraltar and try to teach them how to talk about football.

American friend: “Oh, man, the EPL is so great.”
Me: “Err, what?”
AF: “You know, the EPL, the soccer league. But Arsenal isn’t doing so great, right?”
“No, not this season.”
“But they’re still a great franchise with a great roster.”
“Err, what?”
“They’ve still got a great chance to get into the playoffs.”
“There are no playoffs.”
“Oh, yeah, right, sure.”

Our conversation would run on like this for some time, with his earnest enthusiasm gradually worn down by the dull acronym-less language of football.

Me: “It’s just called the Premier League.”
AF: “Oh, ok. So the Arsenal Gunners is a franchise in the Premier League?”
Me: “No. It’s Arsenal Football Club. And they’re a team, or a club; not a franchise.”

He casts his eyes down sadly, like a child who’s just been told that the annual school trip is to a pottery factory, not Alton Towers.

AF: “Ok. So it’s just Arsenal Football Club.”
Me: “That’s right. Just Arsenal.”
AF: “Man. You gotta get some better names for your franchises.”
Me: Sharp intake of breath. Bite my tongue. Decide not to get upset about the word franchise.

We negotiated these lessons about football with the help of a slightly-too-expensive pint and either the Full English Breakfast or the Fish and Chips. Both were large enough to be considered ‘hearty’ and the Full English was normally sufficient to bring on a mild food coma. The baked beans were not like baked beans in Britain, but then apparently even the baked beans in the States are not like baked beans in Britain (more barbecue sauce over there), so I couldn’t begrudge The Gibraltar that inauthenticity.

Behind the bar worked a pleasingly rotund Englishman who cracked jokes about Chelsea that only long-time Chelsea supporters would understand, and there was always a grey-haired Englishman sipping a pint at the bar who seemed to have been stolen from the days of the British Raj. Along with the paintings of old warships in battle and maps of the Falklands, there was an understated sense of a defiant national pride, which is probably why the place is named after a small British-owned island hundreds of miles from Britain but extremely close to a large Spanish-speaking country…

Hmm, paintings of meetings between dignitaries – how very British (Photo: Aires de Bares)

Wood-paneled walls, lamps and dark leather sofas: how very pubby (Photo: encounterargentina)

La Puerta Roja – restaurant/bar – San Telmo

La Puerta Roja

What? Restaurant / Bar

Where? Chacabuco 733 y Chile

Happy Hour: 6-10pm / Website (Spanish), but check their facebook page for proper info / Mon – Sun: 6pm – 5:30am. Sometimes opens earlier for football matches / Mapa interactivo

 

Briefly:

This is a place for foreigners who have been in South America for too long. Here you can buy a ludicrous amount of cheesy nachos, a draught pint of IPA, and watch football. Unless you like cramped hot spaces without seats, don’t go on a Thursday, Friday or Saturday. Go on a Monday (happy hour + curry and IPA meal deal), around 7pm. The door is not marked, so search for a red door (puerta roja) on the left side of the road as you walk from Av. Independencia. Behind the door are stairs leading up.

 

Less briefly:

Whenever Ian suggested going to La Puerta Roja I always felt a justified sense of foreboding. Ian is my Texan (from Austin – the socially acceptable bit), eating-machine friend. He can eat anything, except mayonnaise, so quickly and in such vast quantities that I once suggested he enter some kind of competition.

At La Puerta Roja the thing to eat is nachos. Google tells me that there is no dedicated nacho-eating competition; but there is one for tacos – close enough. The record is held by Japanese superstar Takeru Kobayashi, a short, incongruously muscular man who, when feeding, resembles a seal with arms and a blonde toupee. His record stands at 106 tacos in 10 minutes.

Ian suggested going to La Puerta Roja approximately every Monday, and we would invariably be sharing a platter – yes, it was a platter – of nachos, aptly named Súper Nachos. A single platter could feed a small country, maybe Luxembourg, but we shared it between two, being manly and foolish.

In the early days the sheer ferocity of Ian’s eating meant that he would be gnawing into my half after a few minutes. I tried appeasement, but to no avail. So we were forced to lay down some ground rules. When the platter came, we would endeavour to draw as defined a line as possible through the sludgy mountain of nachos, guacamole, sour cream, beef mince and melted cheese.

This would be accompanied by as many beers as our bellies would allow before the inevitable cataleptic bloated phase came on. At this point we would try and play pool in the next room, but soon realised that our bellies prevented us from approaching the table, our arms were too heavy to lift the cue, and any bending motion threatened vomit. So we roly-polied down the stairs to the eponymous puerta roja and waddled home.

The original sense of foreboding was for the knowledge that any attempt to sleep during the cataleptic bloated phase was quite futile, and however much time I spent in the living room walking around in circles (exercise) or drinking herbal tea (detoxicant), the night would inevitably be spent listening to the industrial waterworks operating out of my stomach.

The other thing you eat at La Puerta Roja is curry. On Mondays you can buy curry with an IPA very cheaply (considering the paucity of good beer in Buenos Aires). If you are from England, it will be among the worst curries you’ve ever tasted; but it is edible and somewhat filling. Half the plate is curry and the other half is rice, with a separate bowl for naan. It is not spicy: there is no spicy in Argentina.

We once made the mistake of entering on a Thursday night, which is the night that office workers celebrate the end of the week. This mistake about when working-weeks end might explain the state of Argentina’s economy. The place was full of mullets and suits and noise. There were no seats available and various faces were disentangling themselves from webs of hot cheese flaked with nachos. We decided that we should probably leave, and got our fix of fatty food at the Parillada down the road.

There are now signs on the wall saying witty drink-related phrases. (Photo: Argentina Independent)

This is probably a Thursday night. (Photo: Jennifer Morrow)

Hierbabuena – restaurant – San Telmo

(Photo: Pickupthefork)

Hierbabuena

What? Restaurant

Where? Caseros 454 y Defensa

Menu: see Facebook page (Spanish) / Mon: 9am – 5pm; Tues – Weds: 9am – 12pm; Thurs – Sat: 9am – 1am; Sunday: 9am – 12pm / Mapa interactivo

 

Briefly:

A superlative vegetarian restaurant in a beautiful old building near to Parque Lezema. One of the most delicious meals I ate in Argentina was eaten here (a kind of crème brulee made with camembert cheese – I think). At night on summer evenings you can sit at the tables outside with candles; but it’s best for a healthy – though not inexpensive – lunch. An excellent option for a couple or a small group after a Sunday traipsing around the San Telmo market. Don’t go any further south than this restaurant, because you enter La Boca and you might get stabbed, or mugged, or just have a lovely afternoon and run out of time for lunch.

 
Less briefly:

Listen to the menu at Hierbabuena: salted courgette bruschetta with red onion and cashew pesto; roasted squash with a salad of black beans, coriander, caramelised onions, tomato, rice and coconut milk; gnnochi stuffed with smoked aubergine and roasted lemon cream, spinach and marigold petals.

Doesn’t it sound fantastic?

It puts me in mind of the feasts described in the children’s books by Brian Jacques (Mossflower, Redwall, etc.). I must have read about 12 of these books before I realised that the plot was always the same, and the smaller but more skillful army of the goodies – made up of cute creatures like mice and squirrels – would inevitably defeat the larger but less skillful army of the baddies – made up of nasty creatures like ferrets and weasels and rats. But I kept on reading for the ravishing descriptions of food:

…roast chestnuts served in cream and honey, or clover oatcakes dipped in hot redcurrant sauce, celery and herb cheese on acorn bread with chopped radishes, or a huge home-baked seed and sweet barley cake with mint icing, all washed down with either October ale, pear cordial, strawberry juice or good fresh milk. (Mossflower, ch.13)

How wonderful it all sounded – a vegan’s paradise. But is any of that actually edible? Acorn bread with chopped radishes? Sweet barley cake with mint icing?!

I was concerned that Hierbabuena would offer a menu of lovely-sounding but inedible meals. Perhaps this was why I didn’t visit it until after two years of living in Buenos Aires. A big mistake. The food really is as good as it sounds. Each delicious word is matched by the real thing: foodstuff, tasty foodstuff. Even the drinks are pleasingly strange: Anna and I had blueberry lemonade.

It’s true that Hierbabuena rather rams the we-are-green-and-therefore-worthy message down your throat – there are plant pots with some kind of grass on all the tables and a painting of a tree growing hearts (yuk) and surrounded by inspirational slogans (eugh) on the wall. But it still has a lovely friendly atmosphere and, the truth is, you do feel worthy and green when you eat there. As an added bonus there are some beautiful rusted chains hanging from the ceilings that manage not to give the impression of a disused abattoir, which is fortunate given how earnestly vegetarian the place is.

At the monthly Organic Fair in the city Hierbabuena always has a store selling cakes and tarts and other veggie things. I usually avoid their stall because of the queue and the price, but I wouldn’t if I weren’t lazy and poor.

Good solid rusting metal pillars. (Photo: Hierbabuena facebook page)

(Photo: Onedaycafe)

Look at all those fun quirky chairs, it’s like a restaurant from a fun quirky indy film. (Photo: Mai10blog)

El Federal – café/restaurant – San Telmo

El Federal

What? Café / Restaurant

Where? Carlos Calvo 599 y Peru (San Telmo)

MENU (Spanish) / WEBSITE (English) / Open everyday, from 8am until late / Mapa interactivo

 

Briefly:

El Federal is a lovely old café to stop in for a coffee and a little nibble. It’s two blocks from Defensa street, so is a good option if you need a break from the Sunday market, the big indoor antiques market (a block away), or if you don’t want to drink anything in Plaza Dorrego (maybe it’s raining, or you don’t like to be pestered by people selling pieces of wire with bits of reclaimed rubbish on, or maybe you just don’t like spending a week’s pay on a single coffee). There are better places to go to in San Telmo for a full meal, although the picadas (mixed platters of meats and cheeses and other stuff) are quite good.

 

Less briefly:

Looking down the length of Defensa street is usually a pleasure. There are the Church spires that act as sign-posts against the sky, there’s the big tree near Venezuela, which spreads its horizontal lines of green like dirty clouds, and on a Sunday shades the man who sells rusty knives. At the other end, near Plaza Dorrego, there’s the suggestion of trees, a hint of green poking out beyond the buildings, and of course there are the cobbles, which endure in all their holey glory despite the preposterous attempts of the local government to cover them over.

Looking down the side streets is not always so pleasurable, and the part of Carlos Calvo street which leads to El Federal curiously mixes the good and the bad of San Telmo into a single block. It is a surprisingly steep hill, and there are always a few people sat out along it, drinking Quilmes beer and/or watching football, who lend the street the certain charm of community.

But there’s also the ever so slightly intimidating parrillada, a steaming hole in the wall which makes meat sandwiches for the eternal assortment of men who loiter around the entrance and prop themselves on the bar stools. When you walk past your first thought is ‘this is authentic…cool! I should buy something.’ Then you look at the dry plain bread upon which lies the scraggly pustulating tube of red chorizo and you wonder if the thrill of buying a choripan from an ‘authentic’ spot like this is worth the inevitable grease sweats and food poisoning. You decide that it is. But then the men on the bar stools and at the little tables look at you as if you were dressed in the uniform of the British Army and holding up a sign saying ‘The Falklands Are Ours,’ and so you walk away briskly.

On to El Federal, where you can find the same charm without the “I’m going to kill you” stares. It is old, built in 1864, an era when San Telmo was still the barrio of choice for the moneyed elite of Buenos Aires, before yellow fever sent them packing seven years later.

The building has lived various lives – as a local store, a brothel and a warehouse – and, according to the website, has even seen a murder on its doorstep. It has only been a bar in its present guise since 2001, but its past still lingers in the cracks between the floor tiles and under the polish on the long wooden bar.

The food is distinctly average, in one of the rooms they play music too loud, and the menu is a little on the expensive side (for a miserly English teacher), but – like many cafes in Buenos Aires – El Federal is not really about those things. It is about the atmosphere, the smell of the place, the tantalising possibility of entering another time. When sitting by the bar with a slightly stale medialuna and sipping a cortado, it is easy to imagine yourself in another era, when working men tramped their dirt across the tiles and friendships would be made and broken and made again.

La Poesia – café/restaurant – San Telmo

La Poesía

What? Café / Restaurant

Where? Chile 502 y Bolivar

Menu (Spanish) / Website (English) / Open everday, from 8am until late / Mapa interactivo

 

Briefly:

This is – in my humble (but extremely tasteful) opinion – the best café in San Telmo. It reeks of past glories, has an agreeable upstairs section, and serves good picadas. There’s even a guy playing the piano sometimes. The area with the low ceiling can get a little stuffy on hot days, and the size of the menu is likely to induce choice paralysis; but apart from that, no trip to San Telmo – perhaps even Buenos Aires itself – would be complete without a trip to La Poesía.

 

Less briefly:

I had brought my friend Max to La Poesia because I thought it represented a slice of the ‘authentic’ Buenos Aires, the world of burdeles (brothels) and milongas (tango halls) and bohemian cafes where weighty chunks of cured ham hang from the ceilings, entangled in chorizo sausages like vines climbing a trunk, and where the counters stink pleasantly of wood polish.

Of course, my image of authentic Buenos Aires is entirely nostalgic and completely false. But entering La Poesia can make you believe in the fiction. There really are big bits of ham hanging like white cocoons, and there really are people sitting around reading and writing and looking, well, bohemian.

“We will now play a few tangos,” said a voice from below, much to my delight. Max would only be here for a week or so and my itinerary for him included various days entitled “Classic Buenos Aires,” so the prospect of live tango in a café effectively killed two birds with one stone. I crossed El Boliche de Roberto off the list; now we wouldn’t need to go there.

The pianist began smashing away at the bass chords and, in truth, I was glad that we were sitting in the upstairs section. But neverthless, the sense of being in Buenos Aires itself, a city with its own identity, was overwhelming. Here was not a city that was a grandiose but failed imitation of Paris. Nor was it like any other Latin American city, distinguished by their eternal bustle and ubiquitous knick-knack shops and dire concrete buildings. No, here was something that only Buenos Aires had. I leaned back, satisfied, and tried to make out the words (without success, as usual).

La Poesía is known for its illustrious former patrons: poets and artists and writers, some of whose names feature on plaques at the corner of the tables. To most people the names would mean nothing, but to a a tango afficionado they might ring a bell – Horacio Ferrer, Ruben Derlís, the important-sounding ‘Group of Seven.’ There’s even a video of Ferrer singing Lulú (written about his wife, who he met at the café) in the café itself.

The owners – who also own El Federal down the road – try to keep the cultural legacy of La Poesía going with various talks and photo exhibitions and gastronomic tidbits, but I must confess I have not been to a single one. As much as I love hearing about the delicacies of the language of tango, lunfardo, I suspect that I should try to understand my friend Juan in normal conversation before entering that particular labyrinth.

There’s the ham!

Fernet: the alcoholic drink of choice in Buenos Aires (mixed with Coke)

Upstairs, with the poets and the writers.

The menu: absurdly long.