Villa Crespo and La Mamma Rosa

On Wednesday, we decided to take the bus back to the Villa Crespo neighborhood - next to Palermo.  We went over there the other day planning to eat at a restaurant we read about - La Mamma Rosa.  We got there too late so thought we'd try again.  Not too far away on Murillo street, we read about a block or two of stores dedicated to leather clothing, etc.  We took the bus there and looked at purses/bags.  My camera does not fit into the one I brought along so decided it would be nice to find a larger one to use and bring home.  I did find a couple that would work and probably will go back there another day with dollars (better discount) to purchase. There was some excellent quality leather jackets, bags, etc.  But, the sun was hot and we had 7 or 8 blocks to walk to the restaurant with outlet stores along the route - no bargains there for sure - as I said in an earlier post - everything seems to be overpriced. (Except the leather clothing which seemed to be pretty good quality and fairly priced).

Villa Crespo is a middle class working neighborhood which once centered around a big shoe factory.  It is also a Jewish area with a number of synagogues - we passed by one on our walk. And, as elsewhere, even more graffiti is in evidence.  We had no trouble finding our way to where we wanted to go because of a HUGE discovery I made about my iPod touch:

TECHY/GEEK ALERT!

I do not have an iPhone, iPad or smart phone but I do have an iPod touch which is useful to me in many ways.  Recently I downloaded the Google Maps app because the Apple maps app was flawed and useless. My big discovery Tuesday was that using the Google maps app on my iPod - my location is tracked and shown on the map even when not connected to a Wi-Fi.  I could hardly believe it but I watched as I was walking down the street and yes - the blue dot tracked my location very closely.  Then I watched it do the same on the bus - really very cool.  As I mentioned before, the biggest issue with taking the bus is knowing when to press the buzzer to get off - difficult to know if you've never been there before. The bus drives fast and only stops at the regular bus stops if someone flags him down or the buzzer goes off  Now we know exactly when we are approaching the street we want - very comforting.  It is like having a hand-held GPS - great technology from Google.  I don't know how it works, though.  There supposedly is no GPS chip in the iPod so I think it may be getting location signals from all the wi-fi networks around the city - even though it is not actually connected to those networks.  Very interesting!  It probably will not work that way in other than cities.  

La Mamma Rosa in Villa Crespo

So, after our shopping, we found our way to La Mamma Rosa Cantina/Restaurant.  It had a nice crowd of locals and we settled in for almuerzo - which has turned out to be our main meal of the day.  We're just not up to doing dinner at 9 p.m. or later - Argentine style.  The waiters were friendly and the ambiance cozy.  We ordered a large bottle of Quilmes which the waiter brought and put in an ice bucket which was amusing but a nice touch.  John was still looking for some good Italian food and ordered the spaghetti with Mamma Rosa sauce.  I found sweetbreads on the menu which I have never ordered before anywhere but have tasted them on occasion and liked them.  I also ordered a caprese salad to go along with it.  We were served the usual basket of bread and bread sticks but an additional touch here was a little plate of thinly sliced Italian  lunch meat.  My salad arrived and it was prepared quite different from others I've had.  The tomatoes were cubed and the mozzarella cheese was also in cubes along with slices of ripe olives.  It was tossed with fresh basil and a very light vinaigrette and there was a lot of it.  The waiter said to just add salt.  We've noticed that they don't use much, if any, salt on anything that arrives at the table - you're supposed to add it yourself - which is a healthy idea.  However, they also do not seem to use pepper and we have not yet seen a pepper shaker or mill on the table.  Anyhow, the salad was delicious.  John loved his spaghetti and the sweetbreads were very well prepared although I thought it would have been nice to have some kind of sauce on them.  The portions were way too big for us and the waiter happily packed up the leftovers to go.  (Pictures taken with my all-purpose iPod Touch - not a great lens.)  We'll probably go back - nice restaurant and very good service with a smile.

Caprese Salad

Mollejas (sweetbreads)

Spaghetti La Mamma Rosa

Bread basket with meat

Beer in an ice bucket - nice!