I spent most of my week in Jujuy on the same block. It housed my hotel, cafe and the hessian health shop and a further favourite 2 places.
The first, Restaurante Tia, was for lunch. An enterprising family had taken over a crumbling city mansion, complete with beautifully tiled floor and sweeping staircase. In one small corner of a vast room there was a little buffet with hot food and cold, including several regional specialities, and a disorderly queue of hungry workers. I tried kube, a savoury cake made from wheat and minced meat. But there was also great lumps of meat and chicken and even fish in batter. By 1.30pm the metal trays were almost empty - you had to move fast if you wanted to eat at Restaurante Tia. Once you´d pointed at what you wanted you were sent upstairs to a rabbit warren of low-ceilinged rooms, barely furnished with wobbly tables and mis-matching chairs. With no ceremony or pretty features eating was a fast and silent business with diners hunched over their laden plates. It was very cheap - £2 - and though not really cheerful I liked the hard-working family and their little business. One day as I came down the stairs a man emerged from the curtained box they´d made into the kitchen and asked me if I´d enjoyed my stir-fried chicken. `Mmmm´ I said sensing something, ´who cooked it? You?´ Yes he replied grinning from ear to ear.
The second place was for evenings. It was a 24 hour shop, a long narrow space with an endless counter, behind which were neatly stacked shelves of wine and floor cleaner, hot sauce and boot polish - all kinds of stuff - but it also had a dining room out back and served a strange range of hot food. Empanadas and tarts and baked chicken and nasty dishes of boiled vegetables. The shop was run by a group of jolly women who spent their time huddled together at one end of the place, gossiping and roaring with laughter. They didn´t seem like shop workers at all, more like a bunch of Bohemian friends - actors or theatrical folk. My favourite was a real glam puss in a blowsy kind of way. I admired her work outfit of vertiginous heels and tight leopardskin. I was very happy perched on a stool by the tv with a piece of spinach pie and a cold beer.
Also on the block were a old-fashioned hotel with garish oil paintings in the lobby, some kind of college with students dressed in smart black and white uniforms pouring out at dusk and, best of all, a strange Museum of Sacred Art which was no such thing. It was actually a reproduction studio where teams of young locals churned out little woodem plaques painted with the famous Warrior Archangels or well-known images of the Virgin and Saints. `Who buys these?´ I asked the young girl who showed me round. She couldn´t tell me. Very odd. But so, then, was Jujuy.