We Ate the Whole Thing

Pepperoni and Cheese (iPod pictures - not so good)

Here we are in our final week in Buenos Aires.  You hear and see a lot of indications of Italian influence in Buenos Aires.  The language, while distinctly Castillian Spanish, has an Italian sound to it.  If you listen to someone conversing in Spanish and you ignore the actual words, you would think you are in Italy - hand motions included.  And so, it is no surprise that there is pizza and pasta on menus everywhere.  However, we have been sort of hoping for some really good pizza or really good pasta and have been somewhat disappointed.  That is, until today.

In one of our walks to the local supermarket, Cote, we noticed a restaurant on the corner - 2 blocks away, advertising a 50% discount on pizzas and pastas on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.  So, having nothing in mind to do today, we said to ourselves, let's try the 50% discount down the street.  Well, it was a pleasant surprise.  We ordered a grande pepperoni pizza - with the idea of taking leftovers home.  We also ordered a bottle of Malbec - whoa - a whole bottle of wine for lunch?  Well, why not?  We have nothing else on the schedule today.  It was already after 2 p.m. so that is a little beyond lunch.  And, John, being the generous guy that he is, splurged on a NICE bottle of Trumpeter Malbec from the renowned Rutini winery in Mendoza.  The interesting thing about restaurants in Buenos Aires, is that you can buy a whole bottle of wine at prices not much over what they charge in the liquor store.  So, his splurge did not exactly break the bank.

The wine was nice and we sipped it with pleasure while waiting for our pizza.  When it arrived, we had another pleasant surprise - it was by far the best pizza we have had here so far.  It was a little light on tomato sauce as base, but at least it had tomato sauce unlike some others we've tried,  but there was lots of mozzarella cheese, which we like, and fairly thick slices of flavorful pepperoni on top with herbs of some sort sprinkled over all.  The crust was thin and excellent.  When there were only two slices left and I said, oh well, not really worth carrying home so we ate them too.  And, the wine? We finished it.  No leftovers today.

Meanwhile, I was sitting where I had a good view of the pizza chef.  He looked kind of grumpy but I was able to observe him mixing up a new batch of pizza dough.  He was behind a high counter so that I could not see the dough or exactly what he was doing but he worked hard for many minutes. Here is what it looked like from our table:

VIDEO CLIP OF GRUMPY PIZZA CHEF

 When we were leaving I went over to congratulate him on his pizza and I saw the huge ball of dough he had just finished - it must have been 20 lbs worth.  He called it "pan de campo" and we finally saw a smile on the face of the grumpy pizza chef.  Very rewarding and we will go back before we leave - maybe we'll try the pasta next time but it will be difficult to not order pizza again.