The Usual Please

Empanadas: one of the only foods I can still eat in this countryFrom the very get go, it was comforting to find a restaurant with good food, open when I need it to be, with friendly people, and to go there a lot. Two cafes have stuck with me throughout the semester, so I am going to write about both of them (I also can’t think of enough to say about either of them to make four hundred words).

The first is Il Migliori, the restaurant across the street from the center, and basically a practicing cafeteria for us NYU in Buenos Aires kids. Mondays and Wednesdays give me just enough time between Grammar and Composition and Cultura Popular de Argentina to run across the street, shovel in three empanadas, always one of cebolla y queso, one of jamón y queso, and one wild card, chug a cafe chicito, throw down eight pesos and run out again. It is the only place I have found in Buenos Aires that can be fast if need be. It is so fast, the servers deliver coffee to shops nearby on rollerblades. It seats about 30 people at small wooden tables with small wooden chairs at paper place settings that read in English “It’s Time to Party!” And it’s cheap. Empanadas are $2.80 each (pesos mind you… which is about 75 cents) and a small coffee is $4, ideal for visiting habitually. The second is a café called Bricco in Recoleta, the neighborhood I live in. It is a hole in the wall with a couple of plastic tables outside with the word Quilmes plastered across them. I stumbled in with a friend one morning because it was around the corner, and we where ambling home at 8am on a Saturday morning, and we were lazy and still a little buzzed. I had had a medialuna before, they are hard to avoid if you wanted to, and I understood the concept, a sweet croissant, and I wasn’t very impressed by it. These were different. They make them on site and brought them out warm. Sugary, buttery, flaky croissants, so fresh they are still warm and doughy on the inside. We were awestruck. Now we sit outside in those tacky plastic chairs that support your weight and advertise for beer simultaneously at least three times a week. The server, Karina, asks if we want ‘the usual’. I have never had a ‘usual’ in New York or San Francisco, but it makes me feel like I’m home. Sometimes I feel guilty for having two places I go to several times a week; I wonder if I am exploring enough, if I am really taking advantage of this abroad experience. But the true abroad experience, I think, is finally becoming comfortable in a place that is uncomfortable. I get a little bit of that as a regular.