You may be porteño if......you open Gabriela Kogan's new book and begin to feel homesick for Buenos Aires ...even though you're actually sitting in a Buenos Aires café at the time.
That little Borges-worthy warp in the continuum happened to me when I paged to the very first foto, an unnamed café interior that could be anywhere in town and probably nowhere else in the world. If I ever have to leave this place I will be a very unhappy man.
There are a lot of components to the soul of the city but probably none so immediately welcoming and satisfying as the neighborhood joints large and small. Walking into your first encounter with one of these authentic places feels like you've been let in on a secret. Surely, you think to yourself, there can't be many like this left in town.
Indeed, everything about the 21st century conspires against the traditional café, and many of the old legends were modernized and redecorated to within an inch of their soul... when they weren't out and out butchered alive.
Modern living, modern habits, modern tastes, even sometimes modern laws are ever at the ready to shrink them into oblivion. Yet, they survive in surprising numbers. It's truly testimony to the character of the people who live here and one of the reasons I love them.
So where are they and what are they like? You need a list. Everybody has their own, some built over a lifetime, some inherited, some developed by deep safari-like forays into other barrios or by the inability to pass up any boliche that looks promising. Gabriela Kogan has such a list and, although in this opinionated town you can prompt a small riot here by simply asking where's the closest stop for the 60, I've gotta say that it's a list close to my heart's own.
I count 70 bars, cafés, and restaurants spread across 19 barrios and I think... I'm not sure... but I think that all of my favorites are included. I'm personally amazed. She's even included my secret weapon, my nuclear option, to be used should anyone derogate my Buenos Aires Café-Bar sensibility. Sheesh. I thought you had to be a longshoreman to know that place!
Kogan's very cagey about the criteria she uses to compose her list except for one sentence from her introduction to the guidebook sized paperback, "They are timeless places having found the mysterious formula to remain untouched by time." Most probably, she doesn't have a codified set of requirements, just a good, standard-issue porteñometer that every one here receives at birth but the rest of us have to build from scratch. Her guide is a great head start for anybody from out of town.
Other than my "secret" café, which I hope you won't notice, the book has some interesting choices as well as the classics. My mother-in-law's favorite, and the first place I went, fresh off the boat, Los Chilenos, could quite possibly be the most obscure cafe-restaurant in the entire city. The Saint Moritz bar is lovingly described for what it is and nothing more. In fact, all of the descriptions are devoid of exaggeration or embellishment. It is as if Kogan spirits you into the place and leaves you to your inevitable destiny of being swaddled in the timelessness.
Her entire entry for the tremendous El Preferido de Palermo is as follows:
opposite the spot—the corner of Guatemala and Serrano—immortalized by Jorge Luis Borges in his poem Buenos Aires, as the “mythical foundation” of the city (and very near the Borges family home, marked by a plaque, but not much else).My favorite pizzería is there and maybe yours too ...but she only picked eight.
El Preferido is a restaurant and an old-style local grocer. Familiarity, kindness, and professionalism merge in this bastion of tradition located in what now might be the chicest neighborhood in the city. You can eat at tableclothed tables in the restaurant, which used to be the patio of this old house, or at the high tables in the grocery, where you can have sandwiches made with the best Parma ham or one of the daily specials: lentils, tripe, puchero, fabada Asturiana. Everything is tempting.
The best way to describe this steeped-in-history treasure is by listing some of the dishes. The vast menu offers vithel thoné, revuelto gramajo, tortillas, octopus, Spanish sardines, pejerrey Gran Paraná, kidneys in sherry sauce, bife de costilla (T-bone steak). It is impossible to make a quick decision, but luckily there’s no hurry at El Preferido. While you look at the menu, you can savor the pâté of the day with a glass of sherry. And you’ll leave feeling sated and happy, filled with the spirit of the ambiance of the place, and of the presence of Borges, who wrote: “Hard to believe Buenos Aires had any beginning. / I feel it to be as eternal as air and water.”
We recommend: everything.
No matter what your familiarity with the great places of Buenos Aires, there's no way that you haven't been to at least one of Kogan's selections. However, there are some gems like Centro Vasco Francés or Palacio Español that you really shouldn't drop dead or leave town without visiting.
Puerto Madero gets its pick: one. The choripan vendors of the Costanera Sur. That brought cheers from me.
Now that I trust her completely, her list has become mine. Especially for a couple that have always caught my eye but which for some reason I've never entered: Hermann in Palermo and Los Galgos in San Nicolás.
I hope I've piqued your interest ...but you can't buy the guide here. The publisher doesn't have the Central and South American rights yet. So if you're in the States or know somebody that's coming back soon, reach out and get a couple of copies. Don't let authentic timelessness pass you by.
The Authentic Bars, Cafés and Restaurants of Buenos Aires
by Gabriela Kogan
Paperback, 144 pages
4-3/4 x 6 in.
Retail Price: $14.95
http://www.littlebookroom.com/authenticbuenosaires.html
