Here's a story to pass the time until we get to the other side of the Rio de la Plata: an uncle of Marcos', Kostas, the oldest, left the village in Cyprus in 1926 to migrate to the States. He first sailed to Egypt, to get to the closest American Embassy at that time. There he was informed that the US immigration quota was filled for the year. Not wanting to sail back, and show himself at the village barely a week after he left, when no one expected to see him for a couple of decades, he inquired around and found out that Uruguay (also conveniently "in America") was accepting migrants, so of course he hopped on a boat to Montevideo. He spent about a year there, doing what no one is quite clear, but eventually he did make it to Ellis Island and Chicago, where he landed a job washing dishes at the kitchen of the Blackstone Hotel.
Argentina and Uruguay share too much history and proximity to be as different as they are. Partly it's because our impressions are influenced by the fact that our familiarity with Argentina is limited to Buenos Aires, a huge and "developed" city. Largely it's a question of size (Uruguay is much smaller, and, outside Montevideo, very sparsely populated.) But our overall, possibly overgeneralizing, broad brush conclusion is that Uruguayans are more fond of simplicity and ease in their comportment and interactions than their neighbors across the river. Case in point, we don't think we saw any injected women (with plumping or paralyzing agents) in Uruguay, and there's more than you can shake a stick at in Buenos Aires (more on this later). Also, in Argentina the cattle are Angus, in Uruguay Herefords.
OK, I guess we're back to food.
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| Our friend and host Richard, a paleontologist who somehow looks the part, preparing a modest parilla to celebrate our arrival |
There's a long and bitter rivalry between the two countries regarding their claim as the birthplace of tango. Just last year they put it aside long enough to petition UNESCO jointly to grant tango world heritage status, and it worked. We wanted to dance in Montevideo, chalk another locale up, and see how milongas differ, but in the end we concentrated on spending time with our friends. And eating.
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| Far from "with everything" this modestly composed chivito, coupled with a bottle of cerveza Patricia kept this blogger happy for the better part of his last day in Montevideo. |
The chivito is more precisely "erected" rather than "prepared" for you. You pay the standard price, sidle up to the grill, and the man immediately loads the bottom bun with the standards, i.e.lettuce, tomato and a 1/4" slice of grilled steak, and looks at you, at the ready. You then start pointing, and he piles whatever you wish: grilled slices of ham, relishes, bacon slices, chopped olives, chopped peppers, cheese, spreads... A chivito is not a proper chivito if not topped off with a hard boiled egg. It visually crowns the edifice when the sandwich is sliced in two, and, we suppose, rounds off the entire cholesterol package, so to speak. The result is heavenly.
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| In Montevideo, the place for a chivito is Marcos (no joke, see below). They were still setting up, an hour before opening, but fired up the grill and served us, when we explained that we traveled all this way especially.... |
Recently, a brave and selfless journalist of El Observador visited and ranked the most well known chiviterias in Montevideo, and wrote a long article that concluded: "Después de una larga deliberación y muchas panzadas, el jurado decidió que había un empate entre los chivitos de Marcos y los de Santorini [hey, maybe this is where uncle Kostas worked that time in '26] como los mejores para comer en Montevideo. En ambos casos ofrecen una destacada relación calidad-precio, y producen un placer al paladar que nadie quiere que se termine."
We didn't sample the Santorini chivitos but wholeheartedly agree on the Marcos' ones!
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