Day Fifty-Five: Cooking With Diego Felix

There are no stop signs here.  Getting through intersections involves negotiation.  Give and take a little, but you can’t stop.  I am walking around looking for a Movistar or Claro, local mobile phone providers, to buy a phone.  I discover an Argentinian quirk.  If you ask someone for directions and they don’t know, they don’t tell you that they don’t know.  Rather, they give you directions to a place sufficiently far away so that you won’t come back and ask again.  It happens to me four times before I catch on.  I finally wander long enough to stumble upon a Claro, where I play a successful game of charades and get the cheapest phone and a prepaid sim card.

I come back to the clubhouse for the cooking class tonight.  I meet Diego Felix, the chef.  He and his wife run a restaurant out of their home which they call Casa Felix.  He uses indigenous ingredients. Everything he makes at his home is from his garden.  He also travels with his wife and brings Casa Felix on the road.  They call it Felix Colectivo.  When they travel, he uses local ingredients to prepare the meals.  It’s a lot of improvisation.  It’s a great way for him to do what he loves to do, cook, without the difficulties of the restaurant business.

Steve arrives for the dinner.  Steve is a screen play writer who lives here and works from LA remotely.  “Nothing works here,” he tells me. “But you just have to embrace it.” He owns houses here and Oasis BA rents them for him when he travels.

Diego pours us mimosas with lemoncello, an herb that is typically used for beauty products.  Yummy.

Steve tells me that people here don’t think about the future.  It is very much about enjoying the present.  They drink their wine, eat their steak and they are happy.  To think about the future is a headache.  Who knows where Argentina will be in two years.

Judy arrives.  She is staying at one of the Oasis BA apartments for a month. She has four children.  Two of her sons are here. One son is starting a business and the other is spending his semester here studying abroad.  She thought it was a good opportunity to come and stay a while.  Her daughter and her husband are coming to visit soon for her daughter’s spring break.

Judy is originally from the UK but now she lives in Princeton, my hometown.  What a small world.  I admire what she is doing.  She doesn’t want to sit at home with an empty nest.  She is here, living in Buenos Aires, learning Spanish.

We talk about Princeton.  She likes the town.  She lived in Westchester before and complained that people there were too materialistic.  She didn’t fit that mold.  Princeton has more to offer in that regard.

It really was a wonderful place to grow up.  I had the forest in my backyard.  It is safe.  People are nice.  Education is held to the highest standard in the community.  Whereas in Westchester, your status is measured by the car you drive and the size of your house, in Princeton your status is measured by the intellectual value you add.  I can see myself raising a family in Princeton one day.

Parker and Katharine join us and we move to the kitchen, where Diego tells us more about his vision.  We take notes on the recipes we are preparing.  I have trouble keeping track of which dish we are working on but I just focus on the task at hand.

The Team: Diego, me, Parker, Katharine, Steve and Judy

After we finish, we sit down to enjoy the fruits of our labor.  It’s a really good vegetarian meal.   A healthy break from steak for me.

I head to Rumi, where I was invited by Alexis on ASW.  I am exhausted but I want to go and meet a few people before calling it a night.  I sit at the table and chat with Cory.  Shes an M&A lawyer from New York.  She somehow convinced her firm to let her take a paid sabbatical here for a month.

I don’t stay long before heading back for a good night of sleep.  See more pictures.

See NY Times articles on Casa Felix:

Pop-Up Gourmet - Buenos Aires Comes to You

Travel:  Buenos Aires: For Those Who Shun Steak

Comments

[ali]

ahaha sorry to keep commenting but that looks so fun! casa felix is dope, you should go eat at the house if you get the chance. also....YOU NEED TO START STAYING OUT LATER! the nightlife in ba is from like 2 am-6am. party on garth