Today I left the bnb for a short while intending to pick up some sausages to cook for lunch and then I stumbled upon a pleasant surprise. A group of Peruvian Americans were gathered in the southern tip of Kalorama park (just a short walk from our D.C. Inn) to get lunch at a pop-up tent.
Nothing captures the heart of a late twenty-something cook more than ethnic street food, especially when it’s three-hundred meters from where you live. Honestly I had no idea if people were Salvardorian, Guatamalan, or what, but I noticed that the Latin American community was keyed into the pop-up tent. I stood in an unwieldy line for about thirty minutes until I was able to order. The man behind me and I noticed that two separate lines had formed. Luckily we were stuck in the grilled meat line. I saw what I thought was shredded pork, so I asked the man and he just told me they were “anticuchos,” so I nodded knowingly to that (I had no clue what they were) and “pancita” (Oh yeah, like pancetta or something–NOT).
I finally got to the meat table and said “mixto,” so he put two beef skewers and some shredded yellow tripe on top of a boiled potato and a whole hominy cob. I captured this picture before I dug in.
(anticuchos (beef heart), pancita (grilled pig stomach and intestines), hominy, boiled potatoes, and rocoto (super spicy red sauce)
Notice my lunch was BEEF HEART, PIG GUTS, POTATOES, and CORN. I could probably single-handedly cut down all of the Persian forces at Thermopylae right now.
After my caveman lunch, I started working on law-stuffs, then suddenly I heard a parade. I LOVE PARADES, so I went outside and lo and behold, in the distance there was the smoke of incense and a large group of people gathered for a procession. Was it a procession of the dead?
No. It was a group of Peruvian Americans walking along a religious procession called “El Dia de Señor de los Milagros.” It was so cool.
Today was amazing.
Marcos, Innkeeper at American Guest House, a Washington DC Bed and Breakfast
