Deep Southern Hospitality

As a Florida-born Navy brat who was raised in North Carolina, I have been steeped in southern hospitality since birth. Now that Scott and I have found ourselves stranded in Argentina during the COVID-19 pandemic, we have gotten a taste of South American hospitality that is just as sweet as the iced tea I was weaned on.

We met the Boan family when our friend Pete Slosberg, founder of Pete’s Wicked Ale, introduced us in December. We all happened to be in Buenos Aires at the same time, where Pete was giving a presentation on guerilla marketing to local craft brewers at Bierlife. The highly-rated gastro pub with 50 beers on tap is owned by Martín Boan, who provides much of the gravitational pull for South America’s craft beer universe. We became fast friends with Martín’s 20-year-old nephew, Nico, who translated Pete’s presentation into Spanish in real time and later helped us navigate the sometimes confusing culture of Argentina via Facebook.

When the Boans realized we were still in Buenos Aires after the government enacted a strict, nation-wide shelter-in-place order, they offered us the use of a hotel in San Telmo they use for events and guest accommodations, just a block away from Bierlife. At first we declined, not wanting to take advantage of their generosity. But a month into the lockdown – after twice finding human feces in the stairwell of our tiny short-term rental in Palermo Hollywood – we relented when they insisted that we would be doing them a favor by “caretaking” the empty hotel. 

Argentina’s shelter-in-place measure only allows residents to leave the house for grocery shopping or pharmacy trips. Moving is only allowed with a government-issued permit, and we couldn’t get one because the permit requires a national identification number (DNI) and a legally-recognized reason for changing residences, neither of which we had. 

Fortunately, we didn’t have much to move, since we have been living nomadically for nearly a year. So Martín and Nico showed up surreptitiously with a pick-up truck on a Saturday morning, and we loaded up two suitcases, a backpack, and three cardboard boxes of food and kitchen supplies in a matter of minutes. Within half an hour, we were unloading our belongings and moving into a 1920s-style hotel that boasts a commercial kitchen, two dining rooms, a well-appointed parlor, a pair of patios, a laundry room, and a comfortable bedroom suite with a spacious bathroom and a balcony overlooking the street. 

As a bonus, the hotel features a fancy bar that is fully stocked with nearly every liquor we can imagine. Martín encouraged us to drink any booze we found while pouring us cold craft beers from the kegerator. “Let me know when the keg runs dry, and I will come back to replace it,” he said.

Yesterday he rang the doorbell and asked me to bring a box and a knife outside. He dropped the tailgate to reveal a truck bed filled with produce: potatoes, onions, lettuce, spinach, butternut squash, eggplant, bananas, and mandarin oranges. He sliced open big mesh bags with the knife and piled our box high with more fruit and vegetables than we could ever carry on foot from the local market. He also refused to accept a single peso as payment. 

Thanks to the well-stocked kitchen, we finally had a mixing bowl big enough to make the giant salad we have been craving for weeks. So we combined the fresh lettuce and spinach with some cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, and avocado we procured during a previous walk to our local verdureria, tossed it all in olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and sprinkled toasted pumpkin seeds over the top. We served it alongside pan-fried chicken tenders and some white beans that had been simmering on the stove most of the day. After ten months of cooking in hostels and poorly-stocked AirBnB kitchens and a month of making one-pot meals in a micro-cocina, it was quite possibly the best meal we have eaten in nearly a year. And we’ve still got 20 pounds of produce left to work with.