You Can’t Stop the Beat!!!

You can’t stop the BEAT!!!

I slept late.  Very, very late.  

My knee had bothered me all night.  

Luckily, we had nothing planned until 7:00.  

I slept late, moved from the bed, downstairs to the couch, so that I could elevate my knee.

Eventually I joined Adam at the pool.  

It was a beautiful day, and the pool was warm.  It was supposed to be heated but all week it had been on the cool side of heated.  Today, it felt like a warm bath.  

We got some sun, swam for a while, till the ache in my knee drove me upstairs.  

Back to the couch I went. 

Adam joined me, changed clothes, and went off in search of a suitcase.  He wants to take home Argentine wines, because they are stupidly inexpensive here, and terribly delicious.  

I hang out on the couch dozing.  

He shows up around 5:30, with no suitcase, but he did bring lunch.  I won’t go into what he brought back, but it could have fed 40 people.  He was trying to understand the menu and got confused and came back with a shopping bag full of food.  We eat about 1/16 of it and then get ready for the evening.  

Chef is picking us up at 6:15 and we have an appointment at 7:00.  

We get there at 6:45, and Chef goes to park.  

We get buzzed in, and up the stairs we go, and we find ourselves, in the first sommelier school in Argentina.  It was opened 20 years ago, by a woman chef worked with in his 20’s.  He’d reached out to her, to say hi, but to also arrange a wine tasting for all of us. 

The owner, Marina appears, and we are given a quick tour.  The space is amazing.  We are led down a short hall and find ourselves in one of 4 tasting rooms.  We all chat and enjoy the conversation and then the tasting starts.  

In all, it was about 3 hours, and we tasted 4 wines.  It could have been much shorter, but we kept getting off on other subjects.  Mine and Adam’s history.  Chatting about the restaurant business in the states.  Discussing hospitality in Buenos Aires.  Discussing the regions and areas that produce wine in Argentina.  We had a long discussion about the drinking habits of the people in Buenos Aires, and it seems wine consumption is down significantly in the past 20 years.  The history of the school but mostly, it was a wonderful way to spend the evening, while eating snacks and drinking wine.  

It was also very educational, for someone who needs to know about Argentine wines on a day-to-day basis. 

Around 9:30 we started to wrap things up as Chef, Adam and I tried to figure out where we were having dinner.  It’s 10:00 on Thursday night, we don’t have a reservation and after the fiasco from the night before we want to know that we are getting good food.  

As we are discussing this, Marina gets on her phone and starts texting friends.  In 30 seconds, we have a reservation at a Peruvian restaurant not far from our house.  

We all kiss and say our goodbyes, and we are off.  

Adam and I are expecting a tiny little restaurant on a corner somewhere.  

When we pull up, it’s like a night club.  There are lights.  There are a million people.  There is music.  It is a definitely a scene.  It’s 10:30 at night and clearly, they are just getting started.  

The restaurant is called La Mar.  https://lamarcebicheria.com.ar/nueva/index.html

Chef goes to the host stand, and it’s obviously, they are expecting us.  We are taken to our table right in the middle of the action.  

The restaurant is amazing.  There is a bar built around a hug tree in on the patio.  There are seats around another huge tree.  There are tables everywhere and there are probably 30 or 40 people waiting to be seated.  

Within 2 seconds of being seated, the General Manager stops by to welcome us, to let us know if we need anything to ask for him.  He’s off.  The server arrives and as always, flat or still.  

We order water and cocktails.  They arrive. 

Then chef speaks to the server in Spanish.  He orders an assortment of appetizers for us and then a seafood mixed grill.  

Did I mention that this is a Peruvian restaurant?  Neither Adam nor I have ever dined at a Peruvian restaurant.  It is 99.999% seafood.  Of a million different varieties.  

First, we get a sushi roll, with shrimp, avocado, and mango.

That is followed by a mixed seafood ceviche with the catch of the day, squid, octopus, shrimp, red onion and sweet potatoes.   Then next was the catch of the day, avocado, capers, cilantro, leche de tigre, which is the citrus base, spicy marinade used to cure fish in ceviche.  

This is followed up by a seafood mix grill on a large grill.  It had octopus, the catch of the day (they never told us what it was) shrimp, scallops, calamari etc.  It was smoky and delicious.  

The meal was terrific, and Adam and I are sold on Peruvian food.  

Three or four days before this, over dinner, we were chatting about places that might be fun to explore in Buenos Aires.  Chef mentioned a secret bar called Uptown.  He had shown us videos of it, and it looked crazy.  It’s called Uptown, because you must take a “subway” to the Bronx to get there.  He had no idea where it was, but we chatted about it a couple of times.

What would you know that when Adam and I were waiting for Chef to join us from parking the car, we kept seeing people coming up from below the street via a set of stairs.  I sent Adam to investigate, and we’d found the bar. 

http://www.uptownba.com

After dinner, the GM escorted us to the entrance, and 30 seconds later, the three of us were standing in the middle of night club, with music pounding, a crowd of people, and we were clearly older by 50 years.  

That being said, we had fun.  We pushed our way to the bar and tried to get drinks.  It took   a while because they were making craft cocktails, to order.  Chef finally ordered, we get our drinks and wander around.  Into the library.  Out to watch the DJ.  It’s a mix of men and women but it really appeared to be 1/3 women, 2/3 men.  And it was clear, that a number of the men were couples, which was great to see.  

We stayed for a little longer than one drink and then called it a night.  

It’s now going on 2:00 and I’m beat, and my knee is starting to crank.  

When we got home, I realized it was way too late to start a post, so we went straight to bed.  I was asleep by 3:00 a.m.

Me waiting to be buzzed in to the Sommelier School.

Chef and I waiting for the tasting to start.

The wall of wine bottles in the lobby.

Adam checking out the bottles.

The tasting room.

Wine storage behind the tasting room.

Chef admiring the inventory.

Marina pours the next taste.

Marina was presented with a cookbook to thank her for the tasting.

The restaurant. The bar is wrapped around the large tree in the middle.

Pisco Sours.

A delicious Manhattan. Accompanied by a tiny bucket of ice, which is always the case if you want ice for your drink.

Sushi. Avocado and Shrimp.

Ceviche with Sweet potato. Not as strange as it sounds.

More ceviche.

A grilled seafood, Mix Grill. All the fishes.

The secret entrance.

Headed uptown to The Bronx.

Chef in the subway tunnel.

Adam and I waiting for the uptown train.

We jumped the turnstile because we couldn’t find our metro cards.

The outside of the subway car.

Inside the subway cars.

Chef waiting to order us drinks.

The staff doing shots instead of making our drinks. Adam discovered that they change the bar staff every time they do a shot.

Adam and Chef waiting for drinks.

A corner of the library.