The Great Cafés: Cafe Tortoni, Buenos Aires

The word "café" has immediate associations for everyone. We all know what one is, and in every major city in the world you can arrange a meeting with an acquaintance by simply suggesting a certain café around the corner, a baroque favorite in some odd neighborhood or the famous cafe you've read about that's noted for the literati who frequent it, the film stars, the politicians. The aroma of coffee or pastry comes to mind immediately as does, of course, conversation, maybe even intrigue. The very word "café" is so well known in almost every language, the sound of it so suggestive of sensuous pleasure and intimate communication, that it barely needs definition anywhere.

But ... a confitería?

When I first heard the word I thought it referred to jams or jellies, as in the French confiture. Or to a candy or pastry shop, as in the standard Spanish word confitería. But I was in Buenos Aires at the time, and in that city a confitería is far, far more than what's contained in either of those definitions. It is the very essence of what a café should be.

I knew this the moment I first walked into one.

The confitería has everything that its French or Italian compatriots provide, plus much else. It is a café and a bistro, an ice cream shop and a bakery, a wine bar and a beer hall, all in the same very well-appointed, light-filled room. Sometimes it will even include tango, a feature of which very few cafés in the world can boast.

A morning can be spent in a confitería in conversation over a sultry omelette or the smallest, most delicious of croissants, called in Buenos Aires medialunas (i.e. halfmoons). A confession of love or angry disavowal can be made. A plate of fresh fish and potatoes can be yours right away. An afternoon can be spent in the beginning of an affair. Lovely pastas pass by on trays carried by thoroughly engaging waiters. An evening's solitary reading of a novel can be enhanced by talk over a good steak about that novel with someone you've never met before. Customers come and go. The traffic passes by outside while the observant patron reads or talks, asks for another coffee or an ice cream. (Argentines militantly insist that their ice cream is the best in the world, and I don't argue with them. The dairy products in general of Argentina are among the best I've ever had, and I think that's due to the fact that the entire cattle population of the country is still range-fed.) A glass of Mendoza malbec is just right with a triple, a sandwich of fine ham and Argentine Swiss cheese, brought to you once again by a most attentive waiter secure in his profession.

Article Author: Terence Clarke

Terence Clarke is a San Francisco novelist, journalist, and film maker who writes about the arts.

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