Despedida de Renata

One of my friends Renata moved to Sao Paulo, Brazil on Sunday.  To celebrate her last day here, our friends met at her house for a barbecue and party.  Unbeknownst to me at the time, this was to be a barbecue to end all barbecues.  Take a journey with me, won't you?

We started by arriving at her house around 5:00.  Planning ahead, I had an early lunch to account for the dinner time barbecue, so I arrived a little hungry to begin.  Some other friends were already there, and were drinking cheap beer (Escudo, the Miller Lite of Chile) mixed with a little Fanta.  I have to admit, I was pretty intrigued by the proposition of a delightful orange soda to cut the taste of a bad beer.  Sounds like a good idea, right?

It wasn't.  It tastes absolutely disgusting.  Escudo and Fanta together tastes like you added a couple packets of old Splenda and a teaspoon of red number 5 and yellow number 40 to an already bad beer.  The opposing flavors of sweet and bitter wage war within your mouth, and your poor tongue is left to clean up the spoils after.  I choked it down in 4 well-spaced out slugs, and then settled in with a plain Escudo to sip on for the rest of the afternoon.

Some more friends trickled into the house over the next couple hours.  Eventually at about 8, Wasi looks at me and says "Time to go get the stuff, man".  I nod, expecting to be lead into the kitchen to grab the barbecue meats and charcoal.  Nope.  Instead, we end up collecting money from everybody, and then jump in his car to hit multiple grocery stores and little tiendas to get all the necessary items for the barbecue.

Once we got back, it was almost fully dark outside.  Some of the people were still sitting around, while some were preparing the tables and grill.  The music playing was a playlist from one of the guys computers, and it oscillated between American hip hop, and Chilean funk and hip hop.  They meshed together surprisingly well.

Finally, it was time to start the barbecue.  This one was to be a little different than your average on-the-grill experience.  They called this a "discada", but I think a more appropriate term would be "a middle finger to all vegetarians".  We started with a couple onions and garlic...

Then we added some little chicken wings, and white wine to cook them in...

And then, we threw in some boneless pork ribs...

You might be thinking to yourself, "Erik, I thought you said pork.  That looks like just good old-fashioned steak in his hand."  To which I would reply "Sharp eyes, dear reader.  But if you look closely, you can see that the pork has already been added to the discada.  The beef is simply waiting in line."


So yes, the beef came next.  After a couple minutes, the discada looked something like this:

Looking pretty good, right?  At this point, I'd say the vegetarians would be pretty up in arms.

But let's stick it to them a little harder.  Mariscos!

So for those of you keeping track, we currently have a barbecue dish which contains chicken, pork, beef, and two different types of clams.  Your move, tree huggers.

And afterwards, we made more.  Only with the next couple, there was even more meat, sausage, and chorizo in them thanks to a few people who showed up late.

 Even though we didn't actually start eating until well after midnight, it was worth the wait.  Good times.

We'll miss you, Renata!