I've been traveling a LOT lately! It's all been lovely and hectic and exciting as hell (volcanoes! olive oil! other galaxies! medical crises! Everything but the kitchen sink and Uruguay!). So let's go.
The weekend after my birthday, I went on a trip organized for the Universidad Catolica international students to Mendoza, Argentina. Like I said, venturing off to another country was exciting...maybe the most exciting part. Other than that we went on a city tour and saw lots of plazas, visited some wine bodegas and an olive oil factory, and spent hours in a cold bus terminal on the border. (One kid didn't have his passport, so they sent him back....undeterred, he returned to Santiago, got his passport, crossed the border at 4 AM, and met us Saturday morning!)
Considering that I racked up visits to a chocolate factory, an olive oil plant, and two vineyards (where I bought a bottle of wine....that I broke), you'll see that the theme of my Mendoza trip was basically eating and drinking. All of the exchange students (Not just American-- Australian, Peruvian, Mexican, Belgian, and a couple of kids who may have been….Russian? Finnish? I’m totally guessing?) went to a buffet restaurant on Friday night, across the street from our bizarre apartments-in-a-shopping-mall-as-hotel housing arrangements. In terms of quality, it was somewhere between the Chinese Super Buffet in Ithaca and the River country club buffet in Richmond. (Actually, that doesn’t tell you squat.
Everything is between those two when it comes to buffet quality. Although you still manage to spot some pretty crazy characters at both.) Saturday night, though, some of us swore that we were going to a restaurant with lots of beef and lots of wine. Argentina, as you may know, is famous for both its cattle and its vineyards. Multiple people, when hearing that I was going to South America, clapped me on the shoulder and said, “Chile! The fish there is amazing. As amazing as the Argentinean beef!”
To which I usually responded by gritting my teeth, smiling, and yet inwardly shedding an emo tear and thinking, “But….I hate seafood! And I love steak!”
So I basically charged into Argentina, fork in hand, ready for all its culinary delights. I mean, I walked down the street and saw entire pigs strung up over fire pits and practically singing, “Eeeeeaaaaat meeeee, I’m sooooo ricoooooo….”* I started salivating as soon as I sat down at the restaurant on Saturday night and flipped open the menu to “CARNE.” I agonized over what to order as the dogs barked and the little kids left candy on our tables. Finally, I picked filet with four cheese sauce, or something like that, and sat back with my Malbec wine, ready for damn near enlightened scrumptiousness.
Except…..it
wasn’t. The beef showed up drowned in gooey cheese sauce, with little tater-tot things on the side and no veggies to speak of. When I ate it, what kept coming to mind was that line from
Sideways: “Quaffable, but hardly transcendent.” Really, I’ve had steak at home that Phil cooked on the grill that was better than this. Everyone else was swooning. My friend Annie kept looking at her slab of bright red veal and saying, “Oh my god, how am I going to be able to eat all of this?!” Another friend Liz asked us to take a picture of her with her steak, just to prove to her family that she had found red meat that she actually liked. I finished mine with pleasure, but still felt kind of disappointed. Maybe I was hoping for too much by expecting to be licking my plate clean and declaring, “If I’m ever about to be executed, THAT must be my last meal!”
Or, let’s face it: maybe it’s because the food in Chile is a giant disappointment. I’ve been brave and ventured a taste of fish a couple times, but I still couldn’t enjoy it. Besides seafood, fruit and wine are Chile’s culinary standouts. The wine’s great, true. The fruit was pretty yummy…..for the weeks when it was still summer before we were relegated to apples and bananas just like anywhere in the US. (Actually, let’s face it again: the apples in Ithaca are way better than the ones you get in Santiago.) Besides that, Chilean food is utterly bland. There’s never any spiciness unless you dump a ton of
aji (pepper sauce) on it. Salt and oregano are basically the only spices you’ll find in the kitchen. The first time I saw black pepper on a table in a restaurant, almost a month after getting to Chile, I gaped in shock because I thought it just…..
didn’t exist around here.
On top of the general snoozefest that is Chilean cuisine, my family doesn’t really like variety. My host dad and brother hate vegetables, so it’s just my Chilean mom and me eating cooked peppers and zucchini every so often. We usually just have plain white rice and some version of plain meat (broiled chicken breast, turkey burger patty, etc. etc.). Fake sugar beverage to drink, plain fruit for dessert.
I’m not complaining. Well....trying not to and not really succeeding. I recognize that it’s healthy, and that a lot of people in the world don’t get to eat this good. For that, I’m content. But I guess there’s part of me that still clings to the desire that every meal I sit down for be FIREWORKS or something. It’s the part of me that would sit around in Wesley House and page through “How to Cook Everything” for fun. It’s the part of me that still needs to make up for sixteen years of nothing but peanut butter and jelly sandwiches! (I bet my picky eater past makes all of this really funny to read for my relatives….)
But because of everyone else’s pickiness, I can’t really cook dinner myself (you know, brother doesn’t like veggies, dad doesn’t like mixed foods, mom doesn’t like spiciness). Even making something for lunch is hard, since I’m running around all day during the week. So I’m getting by with dumping salt and oregano all over my food, swearing up and down with my friends that we’re going to hit up TGI Friday’s soon, and looking forward to the day when I can wander through the aisles of Wegman’s once more.
Okay, scratch that. I miss Wegman’s so much that I’ll go SKIPPING through the aisles. (Meg! They don’t know cheese here like you do!)
*Rico means “rich,” but it’s also the way to say “delicious” around here.