American Undercover

I'm now in Santa Fe, Argentina on a Fulbright Specialist Award. My blog posts remain highly correlated with travel, and you're welcome. I'm even more boring at home. 

I've been playing American Undercover like I often do abroad. It's easy - just lie about your nationality. Many Americans play Canadian and that's pretty uncreative. I have limited myself to English-speaking countries due to obvious linguistic inadequacy. I was often Mexican in Timisoara because there was almost no chance of running into any real Mexicans (although in fact I did). In Argentina, I'd be expected to speak Spanish with a flawless Mexican accent. Never had it, never will - though I do try. 

You may think: but the differences between and within Englishspeaking accents are really obvious. Yeah. To you, fellow native English speaker. Can you spot the differences among different Spanish accents? Also, I might have been born somewhere and learned English somewhere else. 

For the first time, I played accidentally. I actually told an Uber driver the truth [Translated from Spanish]:

Where are you from?

Colorado.

Ah! Canada! Very beautiful.

Yes, very beautiful. 

Colorado is in Canada?

Excuse me, I got a WhatsApp. 

I was also graced with a free shot this morning. I sipped a morning coffee and realized it had whiskey. The waiter smiled and said he gave me a coffee from my country because I was friendly and left a generous tip last week. Took me a while to remember I had told them I'm from Ulster. I do have an Irish first name and Welsh last name. I do not know whether "Irish Coffee" is also "Northern Irish Coffee." I do know I got a free shot of whiskey. 

But region-based food names are highly suspect anyway. I keep encountering the same phenomenon as in my many Eurodining and other posts: so-called "American" food. Yes, technically I'm in the Americas now; no, according to many people I've asked, they don't mean "pan-American food" but specifically "USA American food." I also don't think they mean that the food contains Americans. 

This is only a partial list:

American ice cream. 

American ice cream "The Danube."

I lived in Linz, which is on the Danube. The Danube is very long but goes nowhere near Argentina. 

American pizza. 

   American sandwich.

American sandwich and Gringo milanese. 

Kentucky Pizza. It's a major chain that PREDATES KFC. That's right, If you think they ripped off the design from KFC, it's the other way around. The friendly "Kentucky" waiter asked me if KFC is a fancy restaurant in the US and I said that's where you take the junior high school football team after they lose. 

"Costilla" does mean "rib" but not "reab."

This is my favorite so far. All four of these earthly delights in one place?! Be still my beating heart! and hand....

On the opposite end of favorite, all the sushi restaurants in Santa Fe (population almost 400K) serve canned-tuna sushi. That includes western Colorado, quite far from any source of tuna. Ouray (population 900) had a sushi place that got uncanned tuna. The salsa sushi wasn't so exciting either. 

(Dis)honorable mention for the pizza cone. Brilliant. Add Doritos, deep fry it, license it to Taco Bell. 

I also grant an award for design to Fabric sushi from Buenos Aires. I've never seen any interior like this. Obviously a lot of work. Masterful indirect lighting. 

Come again? The bottom one reminds me of something. Very warm and archetypal.

Add some pink paint and soft lighting, a melange of tasteful aromas, maybe a little mood music. Those plants could be painted black and moved up top where they belong, perhaps carefully trimmed in the appropriate triangular pattern. A fishy smell would match the sushi theme.

 

However, our efforts to mimic reality might not include Aunt Flo. Also no crabs or “chlams” on the menu even though it’s a sushi joint. And no beer cuz we can’t have any yeast nearby.