el buen gourmet

The other night I met up with Conrad Brown and his new roommate from Amsterdam at El Buen Gourmet. Ben came too. I already forget Conrad’s roommate’s name, but he seemed nice. Studies at ITBA (Technology Institute of Buenos Aires) and had been living in a hostel for over a month. El Buen Gourmet was pretty good; I had a salad with some sort of fried fish. The three boys have steak. Ben’s mashed potatoes were incredible. Conrad goes there so often he knows the waitress; she’s from the Dominican Republic. It’s really close to Conrad’s place, and not too far from mine. I think if I ever go back I’ll get the gnocchi though (maybe on the 29th.) After dinner and trying to figure out how to split the check (Conrad grumbles that the price has gone up since he started coming in June,) we head up to Conrad’s apartment. It’s on the 20th floor so it has an awesome view of the city. [Side note: in Argentina, and in many other Spanish-speaking countries, the ground floor is called planta baja, or Level 0, so when I say Conrad lives on the 20th floor, we would consider it in The States to be the 21st floor. So on Arenales 12C was on the 13th floor, and here on Coronel Diaz, Jenny and I are on the 6th floor at 5B.] Anyway, at Conrad’s place there is an incredible view of the city; on a clear day you can see past River Plate to the country of Uruguay. A new high rise was built near him, and you can see inside the tall windows. A young woman was belly-dancing with a red scarf. We figured it wasn’t spying if she wanted us to watch.