Me gusto Montevideo porque...

Plaza Independencia, Montevideo

In Spanish class today I have to talk about my weekend. Inevitably this involves me deploying my arsenal of approximately ten adjectives to describe Montevideo. It's a lot easier than doing it in English.

I liked Montevideo a lot. I might even prefer it to Buenos Aires. It’s a lot smaller, less polluted, and far less crowded. People aren’t in too much of a hurry (apart from the taxistas who must watch Bullitt before they leave the house each morning). No-one’s making too much of an effort - they’re just getting on with it.

I spent Friday walking. Walking and getting bitten by mosquitoes. For some reason (maybe they heard I was coming) an Old Testament size plague of the little bastards descended upon Uruguay recently. They fed on my poor body like it was the last scrap of food in the universe. I tried to count the bites but ran out of numbers.

It’s a great city to walk around. Old colonial buildings retain their splendour in the face of decay, punctuated by bright colourful houses and every empty wall carries vibrant graffiti and politicised street art. It’s a modern city, but an old one too. Horse drawn carts collecting garbage wait patiently at the lights to cross the main streets before disappearing into the quaint tree lined avenues that lie beyond them.

Walking off the main drag it feels like a comfortable city to live in. It’s not a rich place, and you can tell. But it’s not especially poor either. There are no more people living on the streets than in London, and definitely not more than in Buenos Aires, where you sense the poverty more often and more acutely. But it’s a small town, and once you’ve walked through the Ciudad Vieja and ticked a few tourist boxes, there’s not a lot else to it. If I were here for longer, what would I do?

Maybe find myself a café, pull up a chair and start writing a novel or something I guess. One set in the London Palace Hotel, perhaps. And when that all got too much, I’d don the Speedos and stroll down the playa with my can of OFF! for the mossies. Then I’d nip round El Fogón for a few hundred grams of prime quality bife de lomo, before popping in Los Leños for an apple tart. After that I'd probably sip a gintonic or two and ponder the meaning of it all, while the still smiling sun slipped quietly out of sight. Not a bad life, I suppose, but I don't think I could keep it up forever.

Room without a view

London Palace Hotel, Montevideo

I'm sure this isn't that interesting but you really must see the London Palace Hotel. I can't help but feel that I am in either a Raymond Chandler novel or a David Lynch film. I kind of hope it's the former....

Battle of the Parrilladas

My first night in Montevideo, I head to El Fogón, a parrillada a hundred yards from my hotel. People say the right kind of things about it. It looks good from the outside. Inside it feels like a 1970s Parisian Bistro. I wait for my mesa para uno and watch locals polish their dirty cutlery with the tablecloths. I don’t mind. I have a good feeling about this place.

I peruse the menu, but waste my time. The waiter orders for me. Chorizo to start, followed by ‘baby beef’ (whatever that it). In the meantime I order a cerveza de Uruguay and am impressed when it arrives with a chilled glass in it’s own specially crafted ice bucket.

Next, my sausage arrives. It is without garnish, unless you count the bit of onion skin that has stowed away on the plate. But it is good. Oh, it is good. Succulent, tender and juicy. Well seasoned, with the perfect balance of meat and fat.

My steak, a lomo (fillet) with the chain still attached, is much smaller than I expected. This is a plus in my book - when confronted with a plate of food that is ultimately indigestible, I think the mind reacts accordingly. It is very well seasoned, on the brink of over seasoned probably, but it just about carries, thanks largely in part to its superior quality. I wash it down with some local cabernet sauvignon that you wouldn’t want to drink on its own by the fire on a cold January night.

A full complement of empty vessels

Tonight, I decide, its time for a change. I want seafood, or fish, at the very least. I have two choices - Arcadia, the best restaurant in Montevideo, or Los Leños, another parrillada. I’m all for best restaurants, but after a day walking around Montevideo admiring it’s street level beauty, I don’t want to dine on the 26th floor of the Radisson, so Los Leños it is.

I’m still having fish. At least I am until I walk in and see the parrilla. If you are one of those people who struggle with menu choices, come to Uruguay - the waiters order for you. I am having gazpacho (my choice) followed by the specialidad de la casa. Gazpacho is passable (they have Worcestershire sauce here too then). The steak comes and it is overcooked. The ultimate crime. But garnishing it is the best bit of bacon I have tasted. Two big fat rashers of pink, salty pig. If only I could pick them up and walk down to El Fogón with them.

I contemplate dessert. Darina appears to me and makes me order the Tarta de Manzana ("Why can’t anyone make a decent apple tart these days for pity’s sake?"). It is wonderful. It almost erases the memory of the overcooked beef.

Then, inspired, I order a Gin and Tonic. It must have been almost a week since my last one, but that’s long enough to forget. Long enough to forget how quickly, clinically and absolutely, it can restore the entire universe to its proper state of being. Salud!

Land of the smiling sun

London Palace Hotel, Montevideo, Uruguay

The last boat I took was from Rosslare to Fishguard on my way back from Ballymaloe. I smuggled myself away in the premier lounge with about three other people in an attempt to distance myself from the baying mob of pikeys attacking the fruities downstairs.

The Buenos Aires - Montevideo catamaran bears a few similarities. It too takes around three and a half hours. It too crosses a stretch of water stained by the skidmarks of history. It too, has its fair share of chavs. But I'm in a better mood this time. No longer pensive and curling my hair with the nervous anxiety of a man who hasn't the faintest idea what he is doing - now I just don't have the faintest idea what I'm doing.

I rush off the ferry, determined to be one of the first in line for the cashpoint so I don't get skanked for a cab. But the scen to my left, across the harbour in the twilight, is special. Can I be arsed to stop, rummage through my bag for the camera, fuck about swapping lenses and take the shot? I hesitate. No, I can't be arsed. Or can I? I can. I stop. The chavs push past me, but I gladly relinquish my place in line and take my first picture in Uruguay.

I obligingly follow in the footsteps of many a seasoned traveller and get completely ripped off on the cab ride from the ferry terminal. This guy doubles up as some kind of bootleg bureau de change it would seem, and manages to shaft me both ways, in and out. He has a captive audience so I can't really complain. And asking him to take me to the London Palace Hotel, I guess I had it coming. He drives like a complete fucking lunatic. Five minutes later and about a tenner shorter and I am here.

For reasons that completely evade me, I am certain I will like Uruguay. Maybe it's because they have a big smiling sun on their flag? Who knows. From the window of my hurtling cab, I think I saw just enough of Montevideo to confirm my suspicions. That feeling you get, when you first arrive in a place? No question. There is a casual swagger to this city. An easy balance between splendour and decay. Tomorrow I take the camera, nothing else, and go for a walk. Something tells me it's going to be a good day.

Dining out

Argentina is rightly famed for its meat. It dominates the restaurant scene. The biggest section of every menu is the parrilla or grill. Every kind of steak you can imagine, in absurd portions. My first meal out was a weak effort on my part. I mumbled a few words and got an overcooked lomo (fillet) with crap chips. Since then I’ve eaten a very average hamburguesa with equally crap fries, and a number of unmemorable lunches about town.

Since I moved into my new pad in Palermo, I have been trying out a few of the local eateries. There’s a fish place downstairs, called Nemo’s that served me a pretty good ceviche on my first night, and stopped me in my tracks with the first really good bread I’ve had.

The following night I plumped for Voulez Bar a corner joint a block away that looked promisingly busy for a Monday night. The pesca del dia was the best piece of fish I have eaten in a long, long time. Fried in breadcrumbs with herb butter, it was expertly cooked and perfectly balanced. I savoured every mouthful, and was happy to overlook the pompous presentation.

Since then I’ve had a few meals of little distinction, one notable mainly for the excellent wine that washed down the forgettable lamb chops - a stunning Malbec called Callejon del Crimen. The name of the restaurant escapes me - anywhere that needs someone that pretty on the door is probably not expecting too many people to come back for the food.

Last night I ate at a tourist trap in Palermo Viejo called La Cabrera. It’s so popular they have two branches within half a block of one another. The ojo de bife (rib-eye) would feed a troop of sumo wrestlers the night before a big fight. It is especially good and beautifully cooked - jugoso (literally juicy, or rare, to use the parlance of our times). But best of all, it comes with sauces.

I’m all for keeping things simple and letting the ingredients do the talking, but if a sixteen ounce piece of beef has to speak for itself all night, it’s likely to get kind of boring. It must have some help. Everywhere else I have ordered steak in Buenos Aires it has arrived alone. A dozen or so different sauces and condiments accompany it here. La Cabrera is a fine place, if you can tolerate the turistos and americanos. And if you can’t, well you probably don’t deserve to eat their beef.

Tonight I returned to Voulez Bar to make sure I hadn’t been dreaming. Busy as ever, I get a spot outside and order the roll de pollo. It arrives, daintily presented. Three separate rolls of butterflied chicken breast stuffed with sun dried tomatoes (unimaginative) prance around a mound of black rice. The rice is very good. But it is fucking hot. It is incongruously hotter than the chicken, which creates an unwelcome and unsettling contrast when eating.

The next unwelcome contrast comes in the form of a piece of the wishbone that has been left in the chicken. I can live with this, but when something foreign and unexpected stops you whilst eating, I always find I spend the rest of the meal expecting it to happen again, masticating tentatively for minutes on end whilst my pollo gets even colder and my rice begins to drop below the temperature at which my amalgam fillings are likely to melt.

I politely ask for la carta, ostensibly to choose a dessert, but really to copy down some more words and check up on their description of the roll de pollo. On opening the menu I notice something that hitherto escaped my attention. It is the name of the chef. His name, believe it or not, is Rafael Ponce.

La cuenta, por favor.

La comida casera

No cooking classes at Gato Dumas this week. Instead, we have two evenings at the home of a cocinera named Merecedes, who is showing us some Argentinian home cooking. She is a warm and friendly lady, who you can't help but love.

Mercedes and her daughter Viki

Last night we made pastel de papas. Pastel de papas is, it would seem, Spanish for Cottage Pie. The only difference being that there is a layer of mashed papas on the top and the bottom. Otherwise it is the same, with the addition of a few extra toppings beneath the last layer of potato, namely huevos, raisins and olives. The piping bag stays in the drawer.

Assembling the alfajores

I hadn’t heard of alfajores before yesterday, but Hannah seemed pretty excited about them. Made all over Latin America, everyone has their own interpretation, but all are sweet biscuits made with cornflour(!). Once baked, we sandwich dulce de leche between them and roll the outsides in desiccated coconut. Dulce de leche, in case you don’t know, is caramelised sweet milk. Caramelised until it forms a thick, unbelievably sweet, gooey paste, that Argentinos devour with gusto. It is impossible not to like them, and easy to overindulge.

On Tuesday, we made puchero, a stew named after the pot it is cooked in. There's nothing particularly complicated about it - you slowly cook braising beef in water with vegetables. We use spuds (patatas, or papas), sweet potatoes (batatas), squash (zapallos), carrots (zanahorias) and onions (cebollas). Towards the end we add cabbage (repollo) and sweetcorn (chocla). In a separate pot we cook sausage and black pudding (morcilla), as they are too fatty to go in the main puchero.

For dessert we made pasta flora, a sweet pastry tart. Hannah and I sit at the table and make the masa, or pastry, which we roll and flatten with our hands and push into the tin. Sweet quince paste (membrillo) goes on next, and s topped with a lattice. It is hardly a work of art, hand rolled, uneven and lumpy as it is. My mind wandered back to the coeliac lecture at Ballymaloe and the painful lattice demonstration that took about an hour and had me reaching for my revolver. I guess that wasn't real home cooking. You certainly couldn't sell what we made on Tuesday, but you can definitely eat it. And we did.

I can’t say I learnt anything new about cooking this week, but as an insight into home food and family life it was a wonderful experience. I did nothing but (attempt to) speak Spanish all the time, and had no choice but to listen. It was a privilege to sit and eat round the table with Mercedes and her family. Rocket science it might not have been but the food was, irregardless, as some might say, Simply Delicious.

Bienvenida a Buenos Aires

After far too many e-mails, false starts and misunderstandings, at around 9pm on Monday, I finally took possession of my new apartment. A few blocks north of the last one; a few thousand miles better. I've harked on about the annoyances of the last place, but it was more than that. It didn't feel like a home -maybe because it was the scene of those first, long, dark hours of my time in Buenos Aires, and it couldn't shake off the stains.

The new place is home. It's on a bustling and lively little street. The bed is comfortable, there's plenty of space, a kitchen, a balcony and a pool on the roof. Walking to the tube (I really must start calling it the subte to stop Americans looking at me blankly, though they probably still will) I experienced a peculiar sensation. Suddenly, I feel comfortable, like I belong here (though obviously not a porteño just yet).

When I was in Melbourne for a spell last year, I felt inspired to photograph things wherever I went. Back in London, I resolved to do the same. I took a photo walk around town one sunny June day, and came back with three pictures. Nothing caught my eye; or rather my eye caught nothing. A place has to interest and excite you before you see those things. You have to breathe in time with it, or else they escape. Last week, I was quietly scouting, thinking how and where and why I would take photos. I didn't come up with much.

This week, I am seeing, thinking and understanding and feel inspired. Alive again, and excited, walking in step, the city has blossomed right before my eyes.