La Choripanería

La Choripanería is a small kiosk inside the colorful Mercado de San Telmo. No tables. Just a bar … Make that two bars … behind which the sausagemeisters do their stuff. Sitting happens on stools. Enough for about 10 hungry boys. Twelve women could sit there and eat sausages provided four of them were really skinny and two of them shared a stool with two of the other skinny girls. Otherwise, ten’s the limit.

This place serves three things. Choripanes, the only arguable street food of Buenos Aires, a bondiola (pork-shoulder) sandwich, and beer. But when you really think about it … everything else is just overkill.

So there I am. In hog-heaven (pardon the pun). I’m sitting there eating that plump pork sausage, that’s a little bit sweet and little bit peppery. Sort of a third-cousin to an Italian sweet-sausage. I was tempted to order the sausage they call the Imperial that had been drowned in stout beer for a couple of days but that reminded me of a weekend when I was in college when I drowned myself in stout beer … so I was persuaded by the sausage-meister to do the classic “Criolla” instead.

Good choice. That relish was strangely half-way between being pickled and fresh. Not so crisp as to not have flavor, but not so pickled as to make it “gushy”… like relish usually is. And they had this pulverized herb salsa and a bright orange (or was it red?) salsa that was just hot enough to clear your sinuses but not so much as to make you sweat and fall of the stool.

Recommended beverage to accompany your sausage with a big stein of Kunstmann beer.

All said, that was a tasty sausage sandwich. Will I be back?

Are you kidding? I’ve already been back!