A friend from London was in town. I went to meet her at her hostel, not far from mine – it was a great global walk, I crossed Streets Ecuador, Honduras, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and finally hit Paraguay – and then we headed out for the night.
We went to cool Palermo, not the horrible Camden Market square but a much hipper part of the barrio, close to her place and not far from mine. I began to mentally revise my opinion of Palermo.
The bar we chose was one that I’d spotted earlier on and liked the look of. It was on a corner (naturally) and had windows lined up with large jars of stuffed olives. Inside it looked just like an old-fashioned Italian deli with bottles of wine on high shelves, hams hanging from the ceiling and a long high counter behind which sat a bad tempered man at the till. But none of the produce was for sale. It wasn’t a deli at all but a brilliant bar. As the young night got old it filled up with all kinds of locals, all of us perching precariously on high orange stools. The favoured meal was a heaped plate of bits of fatty meat and lumps of cheese – no thanks.
Alice and I tucked into 3 bottles of wine instead and some of the delicious stuffed olives. We made friends with a group of handsome Argentine boys who were going to Windsor to play polo. And the waiter who looked like a Grecian with strange curls in his hair and even the grumpy man at the till who turned out to be Spanish. Or rather his grandparents were.
Apparently Francis Ford Coppola likes to pop into the Olive Place when he’s in town – clearly he’s a man with taste. Its proper name is El Prefirido (The Favourite). Well it was ours. We both loved it.
Somehow I got home, through the combined streets of Central and South America, to my tangerine hotel.
We went to cool Palermo, not the horrible Camden Market square but a much hipper part of the barrio, close to her place and not far from mine. I began to mentally revise my opinion of Palermo.
The bar we chose was one that I’d spotted earlier on and liked the look of. It was on a corner (naturally) and had windows lined up with large jars of stuffed olives. Inside it looked just like an old-fashioned Italian deli with bottles of wine on high shelves, hams hanging from the ceiling and a long high counter behind which sat a bad tempered man at the till. But none of the produce was for sale. It wasn’t a deli at all but a brilliant bar. As the young night got old it filled up with all kinds of locals, all of us perching precariously on high orange stools. The favoured meal was a heaped plate of bits of fatty meat and lumps of cheese – no thanks.
Alice and I tucked into 3 bottles of wine instead and some of the delicious stuffed olives. We made friends with a group of handsome Argentine boys who were going to Windsor to play polo. And the waiter who looked like a Grecian with strange curls in his hair and even the grumpy man at the till who turned out to be Spanish. Or rather his grandparents were.
Apparently Francis Ford Coppola likes to pop into the Olive Place when he’s in town – clearly he’s a man with taste. Its proper name is El Prefirido (The Favourite). Well it was ours. We both loved it.
Somehow I got home, through the combined streets of Central and South America, to my tangerine hotel.
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