Montevideo's Port Market

It's only a 15 minute walk through the old city to the port area.   And they have conveniently converted two streets to pedestrian walk-ways which makes the jaunt much more fun. As you might have noticed, I'm not a huge fan of where we're staying but I have to admit it is centrally located among some cool sites.  For example, here is the interior of a church that's located just down the block and at the top of one of the pedestrian walk-ways.

I was joking with Patrice that there is so much graffiti and so many of the buildings look dirty and run-down that they must sell more paint in spray cans that they do in large 3 or 4 liter cans. (There's no such thing as a gallon here)

But our destination today is the Mercado del Puerte, the Port Market. 

 It was built, like so many other things around here, at the turn of the century.

 It's famous architecturally for its open spaces and ornamental iron-work.

It's hard to get picture of the Mercado itself because it's surrounded by so many other buildings.

 

But here's a shot at one side of it.

  The building in back is totally unrelated.

 It houses the Customs authority for the port.

 

But here's what looks like inside:

 

Somebody described this place as Disneyland for carnivores. And that somes it up pretty well.  Instead of lots of individual stalls selling various wares the entire building is separated into about a dozen different restaurants.

 Each restaurant has a grill like this.  In Argentina and Uruguay these are called parillas. 

The wood fire roaring in the back (on the right) does not cook the meat. Its' only job is to create hot embers. As the embers drop, they are somehow raked under the grill on the left. That's where they put the steaks and other meats. Before they put the steaks on the grill, they use their own special formula salt rub. But they don't just apply or gently dab the rub on the steaks, they massage it into the meat. And by the way, any meat done past medium-rare is ruined in their book.

I had a lomo de Brochette which is beef tenderloin on a skewer with onions and red peppers. Each piece was the size of half a petite filet back home.  Needless to say I could not eat the whole thing.

As you can probably tell, my cold is  getting better every day. My primary mission now is to make sure Patrice doesn't get as sick as I did.