The Bizarre Truth (13 page)

After the tour, we pulled up a stiff, rickety seat at a small table in the corner to enjoy a house specialty. Bulls are revered not just in the taberna’s decor and history, but on the menu as well.
Callos
, a casserole made with blood sausage and tripe, is a traditional comfort food of Spain. This version was unlike any I’ve experienced—so rich and sticky and filled with so much collagen that if you kept your mouth closed too long, your lips would literally stick together. Just like the history and decor, the dish was absolutely incredible. We ate
chipirones
, teeny little squid, and other classic dishes that the restaurant has been serving almost without exception since the day it opened for business: stewed snails, San Isidro omelette, bacalao with onions, fried eggs on a bed of crisped potatoes, and the famous oxtail stew.

Sounds awesome, doesn’t it? Now, if only the Taberna Antonio Sánchez could attract customers. I visited the restaurant on a Thursday night. Not a soul was in the joint when we arrived, not a body through the door the entire two hours we were there. It was downright depressing. Paco was so proud to show me his business, and how he ran this operation with just one cook and Paco working the front of the house. He’d stand by the door, just waiting for customers who were never coming. The roads around the tavern are silent, the streets too narrow for cars. It’s an ancient working-class neighborhood, and years ago, this was where the bullfighters would come to see and be seen. These days, bullfighters are rock stars. They’re not kicking back, eating callos, and bullshitting over a few beers; they’re dropping Ecstasy and partying with supermodels in Ibiza. The neighborhood is changing. Wave after wave of immigrants settle into these affordable flats, and because the streets can’t support traffic, the neighborhood is cut off like an island from the rest of Madrid, creating a pocket of decay. Developers take over the more charming buildings on the edges of this neighborhood, but the interior has yet to gentrify.

Additionally, the food that Paco is serving is simply not as popular as it once was. The restaurant seems doomed.

But Paco soldiers on, showing up every day to make the best callos in Madrid, giving anyone who will listen a history lesson from a guy who lived and loved in a way that doesn’t exist in today’s pop-culture, disposable world. Trying to leave on a high note, I asked Paco which bullfighter will turn bar owner when he’s gone. He very haltingly told me there is no one—when he goes, the tavern goes. And then he said, “I am the tavern Antonio Sánchez.” His stories, his stew, his stewardship will be gone and the tavern will go with it, making Paco without a doubt the last bottle of Coca-Cola in the desert.

unning all over the world, hunting bats in Samoa, fishing with a Sicilian family, cooking donkey in a restaurant in Beijing, trying to experience food and share culture can lead you into some lonely territory. I often find myself spending time with folks living on the verge of cultural extinction, which can get downright depressing. However, the great thing about traveling is that for every sad story I unveil and undoubtedly sit with for a while, I find another person, ingredient, or culinary tradition that is all about revival and redemption. My recent trip to Nicaragua was all about this positive spirit, reminding me of the National Geographic documentaries I used to watch as a kid. I’d be mesmerized by the schools of salmon swimming upstream to spawn at the top of our Northwestern river systems. Without fail, there is always that last fish you’re not sure will make it, and the cameras always made a point of telling his story. If you’re anything like me, you’re always rooting for that fish. Nicaragua, despite a century of constant struggles and hardships, is finally reaching the top of that proverbial stream.

Nicaragua is an overlooked destination for travelers, to say the least. Roughly the size of New York State, the country boasts two huge freshwater lakes, Managua and Nicaragua, as well as ocean borders to the east and west. In fact, it’s believed Nicaragua means “surrounded by water,” and originally stems from one of the many indigenous languages spoken by natives. The country is visually stunning and scenic, with tropical lowlands, sandy beaches, and
narrow coastal plains interrupted by volcanoes. Hundreds of small islands and cays lie on the eastern shores, providing some of the best “let’s get lost” islands in Central America. On paper, you’d think Nicaragua would be much like its Central American neighbors, infested with sunburned tourists escaping frigid northern winters, the kind you see teeming into airports with their cheap sunglasses and Abercrombie & Fitch pajamas, carrying their favorite pillows and checking that their Nascar carry-on didn’t get scratched in transit.

However, until recently, that wasn’t even a possibility. Nicaragua is like the kid on the playground who was bullied every day, teased by the girls, and just couldn’t catch a break. In 1972, a devastating earthquake destroyed the downtown in the nation’s capital, Managua. The entire area needed to be reconstructed in a completely new location on the far side of Lake Managua. The old downtown is nearly deserted. The businesses all moved, so the residential area around the old city center is nearly abandoned. The old presidential palace, Hall of the People, and the national museum are overrun by squatters. Nobody thinks it’s safe. So with the new city that was erected five miles on the other side of the lake, it’s sort of an odd town, missing a vibrant cultural center. Additionally, the area has been plagued by hurricanes, most recently 1998’s Hurricane Mitch, which devastated the country.

The people experienced a huge political transformation as well. Although Nicaragua declared independence from Spain in 1821, it wasn’t able to stand on its own two feet until recently. The country was mostly ruled by the Spanish elite until the Sandinista Revolution in 1979, which resulted in a short-lived civil war that brought a committed band of Marxist Sandinista guerrillas to power. Although the country’s free elections in 1990, 1996, and 2001 all defeated the Sandinistas, it wasn’t until Daniel Ortega’s reelection in 2006 that the country could seriously start rebuilding. But Ortega is Ortega, and I am not sure this committed ideologue knows how to change with the times. Like that nerdy kid from grade
school who had a growth spurt the summer after high school, ended up going to MIT, and married the hot girl, Nicaragua seems well on its way to greatness. I’m just keeping my fingers crossed that there are no more natural disasters, no more revolutions for a while, and that Nicaragua will get a chance to bloom on its own.

What I love about this country is that despite the hardships, earthquakes, storms, and revolutions, Nicaraguans are some of the most resilient, kind, caring, and open people I’ve met. They are for the most part poor, and yet everyone shares everything with guests. On my first day there, I met up with Sergio Zepeda in his small town of Masaya. He’s a guitar maker now, but he used to be a famous musician in a boy band, sort of like the Nicaraguan Menudo. Here’s a tip for anyone looking to eat well on the road: Hang out with musicians. Every time I’m with that crowd, I end up eating amazing food. Rockers eat late and at odd hours, with eclectic tastes and lots of free time on their hands. They’re a great food resource for me. We started off at his home, where I sampled fresh cacoa beans for the first time. We hung out, ate, and played guitar with some of his pals, like La Vaca Loca, a superbly talented female singer/songwriter. We ended up going to a restaurant in Tiangue, where he introduced me to some of his musician buddies. We ate some
maronga
, a rice stewed in cow’s blood;
morcilla
, another type of blood sausage; and
chainfaina
, a stew made of chopped-up bits of viscera, brains, and pig parts with some herbs. This dish is cooked until the meat falls off the bones. Then it’s chopped up again and cooked down until it turns into a paste consistency, which is spread on tortillas. Don’t get me wrong—I had a wonderful evening. Good food, great company. And the scene was amazing. A town square right out of the movies, with a narrow covered hut about forty feet long, under which there were dozens of old ladies cooking and hawking their wares. You order by pointing with your finger and young girls bring you your selections. There is an acoustic band playing classic Nica music, and the moon is full,
rising over the ancient cathedral above us. However, the food lacked that one crazy item I’m always looking for.

Sergio asks if I had a chance to eat the iguana eggs. I hadn’t, so he leads me over to a table manned by an old crone with three bowls in front of her, each filled with a light tomato porridge. Floating in the bowl are a dozen small golf-ball-size eggs. The embryo is encased in a soft, fibrous shell that you bite into and suck out the eggs. A horrific methodology, but pretty darn tasty. Very much like a chicken egg, but smaller and with a thinner and metallic flavor.

I spent the next day on a bus from Managua to Estele, a town high up in the mountains. You catch the bus at Mayoreo Market, roughly ten minutes from the airport. Selecting a bus is quite an ordeal, like selecting a gal to party with at the Bunny Ranch in Carson City. There are hundreds of idling buses, and since there are more seats than butts to put in them, each one is pimped out in order to attract riders, with young salesmen imploring you to take their bus, not the other guy’s, to your destination. The buses are big American-style school buses, circa 1968, and I finally selected mine, a shimmering red and silver beast named
Tranquilo #7
. Every bus has a slick name. Before we hopped on our selected bus, we picked up some nut brittle from one of the hawkers, then set out on the Gringo Trail and headed north on the Pan America Highway.

I quickly discovered that a lengthy Nicaraguan bus ride is like a mobile progressive meal, with about as many stops as the local Lexington Avenue line on the New York subway. Every time we stopped, kids and older men rushed onto the bus carrying pieces of fruit, chopped watermelon, fried donuts, whatever it may be. By the time you reach your destination, you’re stuffed. We ate
casillo
, a white cheese served in a plastic bag with vinegar chilies and tortilla, as well as
cuajada
, a curdled cheese made at a farm on a hill high above the highway. My favorite dish was
vigoron
. It was shredded
cabbage topped with pork cracklings and dressed with lime and orange juice and bits of sliced tomatoes. It was fresh, crunchy, and totally hit the spot after I had spent the day in a hot bus. After disembarking, I wandered around Estele, checking out the amazing produce market there. Later, I hooked up with a pal who lives in the area. We hung out in Estele for a while, eventually making our way north into the foothills of the Cloud Forest. We stopped at a truck-stop place called Don Juan Papaya’s for a little bowl of soup, and a short while later at Antojito’s, where I met some of my friend’s Peace Corps buddies. We ate some grilled armadillo and grilled boa constrictor in a restaurant that specializes in this local fare; it was superb, and I was stuffed.

We spent that evening at a place called Selva Negre, an old coffee plantation turned eco-hotel. The howler monkeys kept me up most of the night, but it was worth waking up in absolutely stunning surroundings, with a dense tropical rain forest high above the hot plains below. We finished the drive to Matagalpa that morning to hit the Sol Café. If you’re a coffee connoisseur, add a visit to Sol Café in Matagalpa to your bucket list. The coffee business in Nicaragua is fascinating. Here is a food item representative of the campesinos’ years of struggle against oppressors who’ve exploited their livelihood. However, like the rest of the country, this industry is bouncing back. The Thanksgiving Coffee Company, which operates out of the Sol Café, is a conglomeration of hundreds of local farmers, some of whom have only a few acres of trees to pick beans from. As a co-op, they sell to coffee companies all over the world. Starbucks, Newman’s Own—you name it, they’re buying coffee from Thanksgiving Coffee. The coffee association hired tasters and blenders to help craft a signature coffee style from beans that hail from different farms. When you see how slick and innovative this system works, you become a believer. This is going to work. They are a fair-trade coffee company and they receive a fair market price for their goods. A certain percentage from each sale goes to civic works projects such as local clinics or
helping rebuild schools. We toured the facility at Sol Café, where local farmers bring their beans to be dried in the sun, graded again, and bagged for selling. Hundreds of laborers work in superb conditions, with benefits, and earn about 20 percent more in their pocket than at other agrarian enterprises in Matagalpa.

It’s a really positive story, and just more proof that Nicaragua is a turnaround country. When I’m in Spain or Trinidad and Tobago, I’m often overwhelmed by how much of the indigenous culture is on the verge of extinction. But if I want to feel good about the direction of global food culture, I think of developing countries like Nicaragua, where cultural foods and traditions are on the rebound. These are the places where I get to experience the sheer joy of culture preservation. And what excites me more is that this notion of preservation has increasingly become important to Nicaraguans.