(photo credit: some random person)
I’m guessing Chinatown is not a major tourist attraction in Buenos Aires for most foreigners. It’s only a few square blocks in the Belgrano neighborhood, which is kind of out of the way. Yet, there are a lot of stores with random, kitschy knick-knacks like the one here, which is actually of Japanese origin(!) :
Joey took us there by public bus, which was an experience in itself – long wait for the bus and packed like sardines – not unlike buses or subways in NYC – except it wasn’t during rush hour!
We went there to scope out the fresh seafood – shrimp and crab – for a cajun crab boil that Joey was going to attempt for his neighbors. What we found might be more interesting to me (Tony), having grown up going to Asian supermarkets in the US. All of the products were the same you find in the US, even the produce (where did they get it??) , only instead of hearing broken English, you might hear broken Spanish. I think I was better off speaking Chinese.
Here’s a view of the supermarket – looks no different, except the price labels are in Spanish / pesos.
The other purpose of our trip was to eat some Chinese food, which we hadn’t had for 3 months (!). It was kind of fun to order, because even though I speak Chinese and Spanish, my Chinese vocab sucks and I can’t read Chinese. So, I see the menu pictured below and it doesn’t mean anything to me.
So I ended up ordering things I knew how to say in Chinese – beef noodle soup, dumplings, etc. 🙂 The other thing they had here was homemade chili oil! For those who don’t know, Argentines don’t like spicy food, so this was the first time (since Chile) that we had anything spicy. Sooo good!!
Here’s Lisa with her shredded pork noodle soup – yum:
Here’s my beef noodle soup…
So how was it, you ask? Well, if we were still living in California, it would be subpar. But, because we hadn’t had those flavors in months, it was frakkin’ awesome.
What else did we find in Chinatown? PEANUT BUTTER. We couldn’t find it anywhere in Argentina. Argentines like their “dulce de leche” (like caramel) instead. Here’s Lisa digging in – we finished the whole thing in about a week. (Note the Chinese characters on the peanut butter jar)
Next up, an asado and painting at Joey’s place…