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Ethnic Cuisine in Buenos Aires, Argentina

We returned yesterday from a five-day trip to Buenos Aires, Argentina. We had a good time visiting what some call the “Paris of South America.” We were most impressed by the architecture and generally affordable and excellent quality of life we saw. Perhaps our perspectives have been influenced by living 11 months in nearby Paraguay, but it still struck me as a good place to live. I can see why Porteños (residents of Buenos Aires) are proud of their city.

Buenos Aires is a no doubt world-class city. However, I was struck by its lack of diversity. This city with approximately 12 million residents seemed overwhelmingly of European descent with a dearth of other races, including immigrants from Africa, Asia, and the Indian subcontinent. Our difficulty finding ethnic cuisine confirmed this. There are no Greek, Indian, or Thai restaurants in Paraguay, and we searched from throughout Buenos Aires to find these cuisines. I finally found restaurants for each cuisine, but it was a bit of an undertaking. Each offered excellent food at moderately expensive prices (by Argentine standards). Here they are:

Mykonos Greek Restaurant, Olleros 1752, Buenos Aires. For reservations, call (54-11) 4779-9000 or visit http://www.mykonostaso.com.ar/

Kathmandu Indian Restaurant, Av. Cordoba 3547, Buenos Aires. For reservations, call (54-11) 4963-1122.

Empire Thai Restaurant, Tres Sargeantos 427, Retiro, Buenos Aires. For reservations, call (54-11) 4312-5706 or visit http://www.empirethai.net/

If we had had more time, we also would have liked to have eaten Japanese and American food. The good news is that as a large city, Buenos Aires has a wide variety of restaurants. In fact, Empire Thai restaurant owner Kevin Rodriguez — an American from New Jersey — told us that Empire Thai is one of the only Thai restaurants in Latin America. Amidst all of the “Parrilla (grill), pasta, and pizza” — as he put it — you can find a great selection of cuisine in Buenos Aires.

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New photos…finally!

Are you tired of seeing photos of bananas in various stages of ripening? Well, I am too! I finally had a chance to put up some new photos. I put up some photos from our recent trip to Machu Picchu in Peru. We spent some time there in mid-March and had a wonderful time. Machu Picchu truly is an amazing place and one of the New Seven Wonders of the World. If you ever have a chance to visit Peru and Machu Picchu, I highly recommend it.

Over the next few days I will try to post some more photo albums and catch up with photos of South America and Paraguay.

The “lease renewal” ritual

We have a couple of properties. One is located in the Seattle area managed by a property management company; the other is in the Washington, D.C. area and managed by us remotely from Paraguay. Each year about this time we go through an odd mating ritual known as the "lease renewal." We would love to have long-term tenants in both places, but alas, we have to lease them from year to year. Our Seattle property is leased by a company that provides corporate housing for a major corporation. They take good care of the house and are dependable, although they keep us on the hook from year to year and renegotiate at the last minute. The property management company does a decent job taking care of our Seattle place, but they charge a large fee up front each year for "finding" a tenant that renews the contract each year, and they charge a monthly service fee to boot. It adds up. We don’t have many headaches with the place but don’t see as much rent as we would like.

Because we manage the Virginia property ourselves, we don’t have to pay a property management company to manage the property (we retain a local legal representative as required by law but manage it virtually ourselves — well, I do anyway). The tradeoff of course is that we have to manage the property remotely. We rent to our colleagues and have developed rapport with each of them, allowing to work together in the event of difficulties with the home. Nevertheless, owning a rental and managing it yourself is a challenge, especially if you live thousands of miles away from the property. Whenever the tenant needs a repair, we’re on the phone right away to get the house back in order. Finding a new tenant is another challenge entirely. So far we’ve been very fortunate to have lined up tenants fairly easily. Because they’re our colleagues, we can advertise within the greater community and find someone whose timing and price match ours. We have been very fortunate over the past three years. We’re negotiating with prospective new tenants right now and should be able to work something out with them. This happens every year, and each year I wonder whether I should just throw in the towel and hire a local property management company. Then I think–why would I every want to spend so much for some company to do so little? Doing it myself is worth the trouble.