Dad’s 80th is on the 17th, so tonight the family headed to an Argentinian Restaurant in Pittsburgh called Gaucho Parilla. I picked Anne up from the airport yesterday, unbeknownst to dad, and she surprised them with a dramatic entrance.
The food was good, although blander than I would have expected, although I hav no real experience with Argentinian food and also eat a hell of a lot of spicy foods, so I am not a good judge. Dad had the catch of the day which was grouper, and he said it was downright delightful, while I had the rosemary braised beef with portabellas on the side and horseradish sauce. I am not sure what everyone else had, I was a touch overwhelmed with all the clatter and people.
I think I need to have my hearing checked- everything is fine except when i get in these restaurants or stores with tall ceilings and all the clanging of plates and the like. I can’t hear anything, which, sometimes, I suppose, is a blessing in disguise. I just nod when people appear to be talking at me and smile. I also really understand my late grandmothr a lot more, who walked down the street every week for Sunday dinner with a small flask of Cutty Sark and promptly left for dessert, as she had had enough of everything.
At any rate, it was nice having everyone together, and mom and dad appeared to have a great time and I didn’t accidentally insult anyone, so it went well.
We also had a minor breakthrough- normally when I take his picture he says “You’re not going to put that up on the damned blog, are you” but tonight I told him to smile for the blog, AND HE DID!
lurker
If you forgot to insult someone, there might still be time. Call someone maybe… you could be creative on this. Gotta keep up appearances in times like these. ; – )
Nice picture though.
HumboldtBlue
You can’t hear because of all those booms you subjected your ears to during your army time.
Heist on Netflix is pretty interesting. Glad youse had a great time.
Gretchen
I hear that they deliberately make restaurants noisy so people are uncomfortable and turn the tables faster.
Sister Golden Bear
Happy Birthday to Cole Dad!
And yes, from my month in Buenos Aires, Argentine food does tend to be blander than one might expect — although given the amazing tasting beef there, it doesn’t need a lot of help.
They do seem to have a bit of sweet tooth. One night I tried a Mexican restaurant — both for variety and because of homesickness — which was a mistake. The tacos were drenched in something more akin to a sweet BBQ sauce.
Gretchen
My impression is that Argentinian food is all about the meat.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Happy Birthday, Cole’s dad! Glad you had a good time with your folks in Pittsburgh. Small world, because I was there with my parents for a few hours. No special occasion, just wanted to travel somewhere as I was on vacation all this week. Got to visit Point State Park and where Forts Duquesne and Pitt were as well as the Fort Pitt Museum. The Fountain was a sight to behold.. Also took the Duquesne Incline which was fun except for having to wear masks on the hot tram in the heat, but otherwise it was a fun time. Got great photos of Downtown from the observation platform. The cool thing about the top station for the Incline was all of the postcards of trams/gondolas from all over the world plastered all over one of the walls inside behind glass.
John Revolta
With age comes wisdom, sometimes. Pop Cole has clearly learned to enjoy the inevitable. Nice smile!
Amir Khalid
You’ve actually only got the one scene from an Argentinian restaurant here. I’m sure you took plenty more pictures.
Oh. and a happy 80th to Dad Cole.
Adam L Silverman
@Sister Golden Bear: Argentines are almost as averse to spicy food as Russians are. You could probably take over the country if you could arm a decent sized force with pepper mills and pepper spray!
Adam L Silverman
The hearing issue is called recruitment. It isn’t hearing loss, rather it is an inability to discriminate the sounds in certain high volume settings. The design of modern restaurants is one of the settings that are problematic for people with recruitment.
dmsilev
@Gretchen: I’ve also heard that the style is to make the atmosphere ‘lively’, which I guess is a synonym for ‘can’t hear the person sitting next to you’. Not a fan of this particular trend.
Jackie
What a great picture of Dad Cole! He’s positively BEAMING! Happy Birthday to him!?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
In my day, we had tablecloths, dagnabbit!
@Gretchen: I’ve heard that too. Discouraging long post-prandial conversations without expensive product in front of you
dmsilev
@Adam L Silverman: Hmmm. Rifled munitions of course spin in flight, so I feel it would be a straightforward development project to produce a grind-and-dispense pepper-mill round.
teacher ryan
I’ve lived around the world – Poland, Austria, Argentina, Pakistan, Malaysia, all over the US. By far the blandest food I’ve had was in Argentina. Not coincidentally, it was my least favorite place I’ve lived.
prostratedragon
And it’s a really nice picture!
A hymn to the sacred space of a Buenos Aires cafe:
lurker
happy bday papa cole. my relatives in the great beyond are likely wondering where my manners are…
NotMax
Hope someone saved room for the Postre Vigilante .
(Although the menu for the place doesn’t seem to include any desserts.)
Adam L Silverman
@dmsilev: See if there’s a DOD or DHS request for proposals on any of the announcement sites. If so, let me know, and I can write the technical sections of the proposal.
Brachiator
Great photo. Hope everyone had a good time.
I have had some very good and spicy food at a local Argentine restaurant. Maybe they were stealing a page from Brazilian cooking. Wonderful beef and tasty wines.
CaseyL
I started waxing lyrical about the never-ending skewers of meat that they bring to your table, until I remembered those are Brazilian restaurants, not Argentine. Oops!
Happy B-Day to Daddy Cole, who looks wonderful; good on him for smiling for the camera. It’s more than his curmudgeonly kid can manage :)
I’ve also been losing my ability to hear clearly when there is background/ambient noise. Didn’t know there was a specific term for that. “Recruitment”? What, like you’re being recruited to join the hearing aid generation?
NotMax
@dmsilev
Some tinkering with a pepper-box might do it.
Black pepper round in one barrel, white in another, cayenne in a third, etc.
Mai Naem mobile
Happy B-Day Papa Cole! Many happy returns! Don’t know anything about Argentinian food but apparently it doesn’t make you cry.
stinger
Smiling back at a youthful-looking Dad Cole! Happy birthday!
frosty
Dad Cole looks great for 80!
laura
Many Happy returns of the day to Papa Cole. Enjoy every minute of time you’ve got with your folks Blogfather. Rosie saved a lot of love for him and so I imagined her sitting with him delighted by the attention.
lurker
my father turned 80 a few years back. he looked pretty good at the time, as does papa cole in that picture. Sadly, even today, both my father and papa cole look better than i do…
NotMax
@Gretchen
Yuppers. Remember the menu sketch from Monty Python?
For Argentine cuisine, pluck out the word “SPAM” and plug in “beef.”
;)
lurker
@Adam L Silverman:
@dmsilev:
Think there is something like RFP-86 or maybe RFP-CFile about that… saw it on a mimeograph the other day
Kent
My wife is Chilean and I’ve spent a lot of time in Chile and Argentina. Americans seem to think that Latin food is spicy because they live next to Mexico. But Chile and Argentina are bland as hell. Lots of steaks and other grilled meats served with mashed potatoes.
What can be decent is when you get grilled steak with chimichurri sauce (green salsa with parsley, cilantro, vinegar and peppers) or what they call pebre in Chile. Also the street food can be excellent. Especially the meat empanadas and choripan which is grilled spicy chorizo sausages on these little French bread style buns with chimichurri sauc
But honestly the best way to eat in Argentina or Chile is to get some good cheap wine and a selection of good local bread, cheese, and sausages and/or empanadas de pino. The wine, bread, cheese, and sausages are all excellent.
HRA
Happy Birthday, Mr. Cole!
lurker
@NotMax: Talked to a buddy of mine from Argentina years ago before going to an Argentine restaurant for a nice dinner (someone else chose and our family was part of the larger group). My concern was about kids not eating spicy food. His take was basically that spicy was not a worry, and that I should make sure I chose a good steak because for most such places, that was the main reason to go.
ETA: He also pointed out they are a nation of cattle ranchers who live close to the south pole – and spiciness tends to be associated with the equatorial regions.
Sister Golden Bear
@Gretchen: The four Argentine food groups are:
Oh and more steak.
@Adam L Silverman: Definitely. Even my Scandinavian ancestors would’ve found it bland. Or one reason I mostly ate steak. (That and post-surgical anemia.) I was fortunate that one of the better (and affordable) steakhouses was a block from my apartment.
What’s weird is that I actually saw decent looking vegetables in the grocery stores — but rarely in restaurants.
On the plus side, late in my stay I discovered an excellent Japanese restaurant around the corner. Run by actual Japanese who didn’t ruin sushi by including lots of cream cheese and sweet sauces.
Madeleine
Happy birthday to Dad Cole! Great photo!
NotMax
@Kent
And then there’s parrillada.
;)
Steeplejack
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka), @Amir Khalid:
Don’t you both have birthdays on the 17th as well?
James E Powell
Happy Birthday to your Dad! The only Argentine restaurant I go to is strictly empanadas. They range from mild to spicy. All are quite good.
I’ve heard people say Argentine steak houses are the best, but I’ve never been.
Ruckus
Glad to see dad Cole looks healthy and hearty. 80. So it is possible.
And he smiled for your damn blog picture! Progress!
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Steeplejack:
I in fact do. I’ll be 26. It feels like just yesterday I was only 20 and Obama was still president. It just feels like time keeps flying faster
NotMax
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
When can we expect to call you nurse?
Other MJS
Happy birthday, Dad Cole!
jnfr
Very nice pic. I’m glad you all had a good time.
As someone with a lot of hearing loss, it’s not always a curse.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@NotMax:
Hopefully a few months from now. I’ve been putting off the NCLEX for too long
dlwchico
Congrats to your dad!
My mom’s 80th is in March.
Steeplejack
Happy birthday, Dad Cole! ?????
NotMax
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Obligatory?
mrmoshpotato
Happy 80th to Papa Cole! Sounds like everyone had a good time.
Kent
@NotMax: Well yeah. They have a lot of kinds of sausages. I usually stick with chorizo, which I have discovered is a completely different thing entirely depending on which part of the world you are in.
In Spain, chorizo is basically hard cured sausages similar to salami or peperoni but cured with lots of paprika so somewhat spicier and more red in color. But you can just slice and eat it like salami. Or chop it up and add it to paella.
In Mexico, chorizo is an uncooked raw sausage that tends to be pretty spicy. Generally chopped up and cooked to serve with eggs and tortillas for breakfast. Basically spicy breakfast sausage.
In Argentina and Chile, chorizo is ordinary coarse sausage that you grill and eat on a bun, similar to bratwurst but usually spicier with garlic and paprika.
scav
Go Dad!
NotMax
@Kent
Then there’s Portuguese sausage, studded with globules of fat that practically glisten enough to read by.
The Moar You Know
@Kent: I’d grown up on chorizo here in San Diego. Grease city, can give those not used to it tummy trouble…always excellent. My wife and I went to London, hit a Spanish joint and ordered the stuff; I thought they’d screwed up our order. Not so. And it was delicious, but absolutely not what we were expecting.
Adam L Silverman
@NotMax: Cows don’t have gizzards. What is being called a gizzard here is actually the cow’s brains.
Ruckus
@NotMax:
Here’s a good one as well, as we are talking birthdays. And this guy will be 76 next month.
The Moar You Know
@Kent: it’s a border thing, that is. As I found out a while ago, Mexican food in Mexico City (known there as “food”) is downright bland compared to the dishes you’ll find in San Diego, Arizona, New Mexico or Texas, or the regions across the border from those states.
I adore Mexico City. If they could clean up their police, which will never ever happen, I’d live there. In spite of the smog.
Amir Khalid
@NotMax:
Oh, yummy.
(Not.)
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: Let’s not make people break out the canned pig’s brains in milk gravy (one review: So not kosher!)
Amir Khalid
@Steeplejack:
Yes, I hit The Big Six-oh tomorrow.
HumboldtBlue
I see things are going swimmingly in The Republic of South Africa.
Shit ain’t right, and we can all feel it. The balance is off.
Badly.
Elsewhere, read Iridian Casarez and her vaccine story.
Old Dan and Little Ann
I was in the burgh from 93 – 97. It’s much more fun now, seemingly.
frosty
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Time does fly faster, every year. When you were 10, summers lasted forever. They were 1/40th of the time you’d been alive. When you’re 30, they’re 1/120 of the time you’ve lived. They go by 3 times faster than when you were 10. We perceive time as a percentage of what we’ve experienced, not as an absolute length.
When I figured this out I realized that a year for me was like a season for my grandmother.
Brachiator
@Amir Khalid:
Congratulations.
Don’t hit it too hard. It might hit back.
JAFD
Happy Birthday, Papa Cole, and many more !
Meself, hitting my 71st in a couple of weeks. Back in my prime again.
Had my hearing checked last year. Found a loss at the higher frequencies. My main problem is picking conversations out of background noise. Perhaps if hearing aids become available OTC will find something helpful and affordable
Have great weekend, everyone !
Richard
Happy Birthday to your Dad! That sounds like a nice party. I really like that chimichurri sauce they have in Argentina. We hosted a nice man from Argentina a few years ago. He was from the somewhere in Patagonia, Puerto Montt? We bought half of rib cage of a cow so he could show us how they do that in his country. It was delicious. He was an excellent guest, no complaints. His Spanish sounded strange, but it was easy to understand. That was a fun time. Based on this experience, i am fond of the people who live there.
Amir Khalid
@Brachiator:
After what happened in 1996 and 2014, I hope that this year there will be no major aviation disaster on my birthday.
Tehanu
Happy birthday to Dad Cole, and I’m glad you all had a good time.
rikyrah
Happy Birthday, Papa Cole??????
Mary G
Happy birthday, Papa Cole – he looks maaahvelous. Happy birthday in advance to Amir in case I forget or have to take the day off the internet.
opiejeanne
Happy birthday, Dad Cole.
July 17 was my dad’s birthday, too. He’d be considerably older than your dad, if he were still with us: 102.
HumboldtBlue
This motherfucker, Louis, needs to come over to my place.
Ruckus
@JAFD:
71, cool. Hearing is something that we often take for granted, till it isn’t as good any more. 2 yrs ago I had an attack and lost 20% of my hearing on the right side. That’s on top of the single frequency, constant tinnitus on the same side for the last 18 yrs from an unexpected explosion I was standing near, but other than that, my hearing on my right side is great. Just a little story to let you know that you aren’t alone in hearing issues. Growing old is such fun, OK it’s far more fun than the alternative.
Ms. Deranged in AZ
Happy birthday Papa Cole!!! A lovely photo.
Ruckus
@NotMax:
If you haven’t listened to the link I put up at #53 give it a listen.
Van Morrison. I think he sounds better than ever and at 75 yrs old.
J_A
@Kent:
Being from Spain, I had a similar but opposite disappointment. I wanted chorizo, and was given mashed cooked sausage.
Definitely, hell is other people ?
satby
Happy Birthday to Pappa Cole! Nice picture, and sounds like everyone had a great time.
Early happy birthdays to all who will be celebrating soon!
satby
@JAFD: (and JGC up top): OTC hearing aids that actually work will be coming.
Now the challenge is to get people who need them to wear them. Most of the people I know who have hearing aids seldom wear them, despite spending thousands on them.
zhena gogolia
Happy birthday, Mr. Cole!
My understanding of Argentinian cuisine is — meat.
tmflibrarian
Oh, we used to look forward to Gaucho whenever we were in Pittsburgh to see my niece and sister. My niece LOVED it during growing spurts–she could eat a whole half sandwich, which was more than enough for me. The last time we were up there, she had gone temporarily vegetarian (more about eating something dead than animals), so we didn’t get a chance to stop. It’s not spicy, but if you’ve spent the day chasing a 5-year-old around multiple parks, trudging hills picking blueberries, and dancing in the living room before bath time, well, a big rosemary beef sandwich and a glass of wine in the hotel room is bliss.
Happy Birthday to your dad! I’m so glad he had a nice time out!
Betty
@HumboldtBlue: Youse is eastern PA, yinz is western PA ( and likely WA as well)
Andrew
I spent a month in Argentina and Chile and the food in both places is good but generally not spicy. I’ve never found it bland, though.
sherparick
Hello:
Happy Birthday to your Dad! Glad you and your family had such a good time. I find smiling and nodding at people usually make them think you are a brilliant conversationalist:-)
Piggy backing on Adam’s comment regarding your hearing issue, “Recruitment” is a type of hearing loss, but is treatable (you may need to use a hearing aid in some circumstances). https://www.nchearingloss.org/recruit.htm
Argentina (and Chile) are countries that lie south of the tropics under the Southern Cross and are temperate (in fact Patagonia and Southern Chile have fairly harsh winters, that of course are our summers). Countries in temperate climates generally have less spicy food than places with warmer, tropical & sub-tropical climates, since spices help preserve food in warm settings. And spices tend to be expensive if not locally grown, so like most temperate climates, the food is “temperate.”
https://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/~burton/foodcourse/spices.html
karen marie
Happy birthday, Mr. Cole!
I’d be smiling like a fool if I achieved my 80th after the last 18 months too!
May you have many happy returns of the day.
Dennis
Modern restaurant design seems to prize loud noise–all hard surfaces and open spaces. It really inhibits conversation, which is one of the joys of dining out.