Saturday, October 24, 2009

calle chino

i went to "barrio chino" (china town) today. it's super tiny so i refer to it as "calle chino" (china street).

i was told that i can get so many more types of cooking ingredients in barrio chino than the regular argentine supermarkets. it's not far from my apartment, maybe a 10 minute bus ride. i've been to barrio chino before but i didn't look in any of the "chinos" (chinese grocery stores). i thought they would just have chinese food. so wrong...so wrong.

they had a lot of variety. spices, loose leaf tea, sauces, and....fruit. i found limes (which are sometimes hard to find) and i got my beloved passion fruit that i can't find anywhere else in the city (so yippy). i also found what i thought was lemongrass so i asked a supermarket employee "que es esto" (what is this)....lemongrass she answered back. so i asked "como se dice lemongrass in espanol" (how do you say lemongrass in spanish?) "lemongrass" she responded.

one chino we walked into stank. it was such a strong stench i had to hold my nose.

here are the stench suspects...

(photo above: pigs feet)(photo above: chicken feet)
(photo above: more chicken feet)
(photo above: liver)
(photo above: heart)
(photo above: clams? what are those things coming out of the clams?)
(photo above: i don't see a safety hazard in this photo? big knife where anyone can grab it? what?)
(photo above: octopus)(photo above: sugar cane)

3 comments:

Nancy said...

EWW!
:)

jenna said...

I think those are geoducks, not clams. Even my adventurous palate has not brought me to try them. They can live 200 years, and I just can't face consuming something that was present for the Civil War.

Email from me, coming soon, chica.

jenna said...

I do know that the US Civil War ended in 1865, and therefore, something 200 years old was not really present for the Civil War. I said "Civil War" to make a point about how old those nasty geoducks are, but feel I should make the point that I'm not a total, uneducated ignoramus.