Penguins and Sunshine

In other words...my trip to Santiago, Antarctica, and Buenos Aires! I got back a few weeks ago, but have had a lot going on at work and haven't had time to update. In any case, as I flip through the photos, the warm weather sort of takes me out of the current polar vortex in NYC. Yes, it was warmer in Antarctica than it is currently in NYC. 

I didn't have a hotel booked for Santiago, and I was going to do Air Bnb. But then Becca told me about the W and how great it is, so, I decided to splurge and book a room. The hotel is amazing, the beds are comfy, I loved the spacious showers, the music makes you feel like shimmying in the elevator (which I do anyways, even without music), and the staff are very accommodating, I may have to make this my preferred choice of hotels.

I landed, threw on some lip gloss, and headed straight to dinner (but of course) at Osaka, a Japanese fusion restaurant within the hotel. The food was fantastic!

The cocktails are your typical trendy/tasty concoctions. I started off with a muddled strawberry cocktail.

                   

Sushi bar!

I ordered the Aji Amarillo ceviche - w a sweet potato samosa type thing. We've seen aji first in Colombia - a yellow colored chili pepper. This was incredible and a welcome change from all the steak I've been eating.

                  

Back in NYC, I was reading up on Osaka, apparently it is on the list of Pelligrino's top 50 Latin American restaurants. Ooooh! Fancy!

Then I cruised around Antarctica. We had breakfast, lunch, and dinner on board every day, and I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the food considering we were in the middle of nowhere. We even had a nice cocktail hour on the deck (jackets required, heh heh heh).

Here are a few snaps of our final meal on board. I ordered the Chateaubriand. My favorite foods on board our ship were the peanut butter cookies and the bread rolls. I'm not joking - these bread rolls were out of this world. At one dinner service, Vijay's bread roll went missing. We still aren't sure where it went.

So we arrived in Ushuaia and someone on our tour told us about a bakery that serves meringue penguins. Didn't have to ask us twice about what our itinerary should include.

I pretended to be a seal and ferociously ripped off the head of this penguin. My friends stared in horror.

Back to warm and sunny South America. We had arranged for two nights in Buenos Aires, and Becca booked us a table at La Cabrera. The last time I was at La Cabrera, I didn't eat steak. Oh, how the world has changed.

Medium rare bone in rib eye. Because, why not?

Before

After. This is slightly disgusting. But we all worked out in the morning!

Post dinner, Nicholas took us to a gorgeous bar in Palermo. I think the name is Isabel B de Ferari. Excellent cocktails and we shazamed just about every song. There were also several mirrors, so I could imagine if I were more inebriated, I would take several selfies (I didn't take a single one, I swear). I ordered the Oriental.

We stumbled into this adorable lunch spot, named Panera Rosa.

This was a massive barbacoa sandwich. I'm pretty sure this is why my jeans don't fit.

AND THIS IS THE BEST GELATO IN THE WORLD, named Persicco Recoleta. My two scoops were dulce de leche with brownie and super chocolate.

                   

Somehow we found ourselves with a pitcher of champagne sangria.

                       

For our second night, Sanjay also got us some spots at an underground supper club named Casa Salt Shaker. So basically all we did was eat our way through Buenos Aires.

The first dish was a causa. How interesting, I had this for the first time at de Porres back in Brooklyn! It was cool to try a different preparation of it.

Next, we had a chilled soup. 

This was my favorite dish - green tea fettuccine!

Casa Salt Shaker was a lot of fun - we met people from Norway, Sweden, and good ol' USA. I had  to dash during dessert to get to the airport on time, but Chef Dan kindly wrapped up part of dessert for me to take on the road.

If you are in Buenos Aires and want to check it out - you definitely have to make reservations well in advance.

The plane food was relatively boring, I may have even slept through a meal service.

And now, back to this polar vortex, I'm digging out my balaclava.