After 18 years driving a bus and 26 years as a taxista, the sweater-vested sixty-something oozed urban wisdom – and his instincts seemed as sharp as his tongue.

Over the course of his cabbie career, Julio has been shot in the leg, stabbed in the back, and knifed on the head – all by women (“Women are far more dangerous than men,” he said). Nuns have blessed him and granted him protection (a Saint Teresa medallion hangs from his rear view mirror). And he’s stared down the barrel of a gun more times than he’s changed his tires.

“On the streets, you have to have a special sense of things,” he said, “You have to know how to talk to the doctor, the beggar, and the delinquent who’s pointing a pistol at you.”

To drive home his point, he told us about a recent ride with two thrill-seekers he’d picked up outside Cocodrilo, a glitzy Palermo nightclub, who offered him a line of cocaine.

“In this kind of a situation, you have to know how to answer the right way,” Julio said, “If you say, ‘No way, I don’t do that s**t,’ the guy isn’t going to be pleased. I know the lexicon. So I told him my doctor wouldn’t let me do drugs anymore. And I became part of his crowd.”

Despite his diplomacy, the taxista could still smell trouble, especially when his passengers directed him to a dead-end street in Lanus (a working class suburb south of BA). After one of them whipped out a gun and ordered Julio to give him the money and the cab, the exchange went something like this:

Julio: I’ll give you the money, but I’m not giving you the car. I need it to make a living.
Armed Passenger: What kind of idiot are you, old man? Do you want to die?
Julio: Why would a smart guy like you want to kill me? You’ve obviously got a lot going for you – you’ve got money, you can go out to good clubs. But I’ll give you the money – I can replace that.
Unarmed Passenger: Come on, man. Put the gun away. Just pay the man.
Armed Passenger: $@%#$%#&^%!
Julio: Do you really want to ruin your life? What good is it going to do you to shoot me?
Armed Passenger (still cussing, handing over a 50 peso bill): Do you have change?
Julio (taking 50 peso bill): No.
Armed Passenger: You’re a lucky old bastard. I’m even giving you a tip!
Julio (driving away with his night’s wages plus 50 hard-earned pesos): Thanks.

“I was betting, see,” Julio told me, “I knew he wasn’t going to kill me.”

I could only nod in amazement. Julio’s survival went beyond street smarts. After so many years and so many passengers, he’d obviously mastered a few Jedi mind tricks.

So acute was this cabbie’s sense of things, I shouldn’t have been surprised when he delivered my co-adventurer and me to Taxi Churrasquería. As he braked in front of the corner cantina – with taxis parked at every curb and cabbies crowding the entrance – we could hardly contain our glee. Even the sign was yellow and black.

“This is exactly what we were looking for,” I told Julio, “It’s perfect.”

The wise old taxista winked and said, “Everything is homemade here. And everything is good.”

And then he was gone.

Heads snapped to attention as we squeezed past the doorway, through a mass of men and toward the fellow behind the counter who was taking orders and controlling the chaos. Squinting at a menu scribbled on a white board, I noticed that few things cost more than 20 pesos (less than $7 US). I asked him what dishes he recommended.

The man next in line interrupted the recitation of the day’s specials, looked my blonde co-adventurer and I up and down, and asked the question every man in the room wanted us to answer, “You aren’t taxi drivers, are you?”

“Not yet,” I should’ve answered. Instead, I told him no, but that a taxista had brought us there.

We ordered lasagne and a half portion of bife de chorizo (sirloin steak) with a side of butternut squash puree, found two seats at the tile counter in the back, and tried to be as cool as we were conspicuous. I had never seen so many cabbies in one place.

Naturally, our food arrived in a flash. Of course, the bife was grilled to red-pink perfection. And the lasagne – with thick layers of spinach, bechamel, ham, fresh noodles, and a generous helping of beefy tomato sauce – tasted homemade.

“This tastes like it was cooked by a woman,” I said to my co-adventurer.

“It was,” she said, pointing toward the semi-open kitchen.

I peaked around the corner. Sure enough, three women were in the midst of a calmly choreographed kitchen dance, communicating in silence as they handed over plate after plate of food.

I had a plane to catch, so we had to say “no” to the coffee that was free with our meal. (At Taxi Churrasquería, any dish over 10 pesos comes with complimentary coffee or tea. Every cabbie needs a caffeine boost, right?)

Walking away from my last taxi adventure in Buenos Aires (for now), I felt as if the city had conspired to make things fall into place with a poetry I never could have engineered on my own.

Julio Verón – streetwise, sincere, down-to-earth, and generous – embodied everything that is remarkable about Buenos Aires taxi drivers. And his restaurant of choice – honest, cheap, and reminiscent of home – was all that I hope for when I start a food quest.

Taxi Gourmet may be going global, but this final escapade reminded me that it couldn’t have been born anyplace but Buenos Aires. New York, you’ve got a tough act to follow.

Taxi Churrasquería
Estados Unidos 2400 – Constitución
Tel: 4941-4938
Open: Mon-Sat, 7am-6pm
Free coffee or tea with any purchase over 10 pesos

So absorbed in helping us find a good place to eat, the taciturn taxista forgot to switch on the meter until we crossed Avenida 9 de Julio and entered the Constitución neighborhood.

“Let me see,” he pondered, steadying the hemp thread crucifix that hung from the rear view mirror, “There’s a good restaurant in Congreso that has everything – pizza, pasta, parilla, pescado…I could take you there.”

“We’re looking for something small,” my sixty-something amiga norteamericana chimed in from the backseat, “You know, a neighborhood place.”

“Someplace where you would eat,” I added.

“Aha,” Ricardo smiled, “OK.”

He calmly steered the cab into the thick of the Friday afternoon traffic and told us we were headed to one of his favorite lunch spots.

Thrilled, my companions (the same fun-loving gang that ventured to Parilla 29 a couple of weeks ago) and I relaxed.

We made awkward attempts at conversation with Ricardo, a fifty-something Buenos Aires native who grew up in the Belgrano barrio, but his brief answers suggested that he preferred to ride in silence.

He brought the taxi to a slow stop on the corner of San Jose and Humberto 1°.

“This is it,” he said, “Now what am I going to have for lunch?”

“You could join us,” I offered.

He shook his head and politely declined. Hoping to make up for the pesos he’d lost from forgetting the meter, we added a generous tip to the fare, climbed out of the cab and into Ricardo’s chosen haunt.

With fifteen tables, two waiters, and poster-sized photos of grandchildren hanging in the far corner, Fornos was every bit the neighborhood restaurant we were hoping for.

Heads turned and conversation stopped as we grabbed one of two empty tables. The Channel 9 news broadcast from a muted television in the corner. An autographed picture of Susana Gimenez, Argentina’s platinum haired, plastic-surgeried answer to Oprah, occupied the center of a photo collage that flanked the pass-through window to the kitchen.

Feeling like New Yorkers who’d stumbled into Cheers, we settled into our seats and inhaled aromas of beef stew and boiling pasta. The men behind us jumped back into their debate about the fate of Boca Juniors (a heated soccer discussion that served as a backdrop for our entire three course lunch).

And in walked Ricardo. Our pot-bellied, silver haired waiter greeted the taxista with a back-slapping man hug and led him to a nearby table.

Raising his hand in a shy wave, Ricardo passed our table and sat with his back to us. We weren’t surprised that the taciturn taxista didn’t want to join us. We accepted the simple fact of his presence as reward enough on our quest.

Fornos featured just twelve items on its menu, all of which were scrawled on a wall-mounted chalkboard and none of which exceeded eight pesos (less than three US dollars).

Vicente, the silver-haired waiter, recommended the vacio (flank steak – roughly translated, since Argentines cut their beef differently than we do in the US) with oven-roasted potatoes. We followed his recommendation – and ordered chicken soup with pastina, homemade linguini with estofado (stew meat similar to pot roast), a tortilla española, and a plate of mostaccioli with chicken.

Just after we’d flagged down his teenage helper and put in our drink order, Vicente returned with several plates of food in hand.

“Buen provecho,” he smiled, enjoying our amazement at his speed. Rushing to the door to greet a family of four, he hugged the father hello, kissed the mother, and pinched the children’s cheeks.

“He’s got to be the owner,” the female half of the tango dancing couple from Humboldt observed, digging in to the chicken soup and moaning with delight.

She was right. Vicente radiated all the pride, care and authority of a good restaurant owner.

The rest of our dishes arrived, each of them exuding the same straightforward, stick to your ribs comfort as the chicken soup. No fireworks. No frills. An embodiment of the muted flavors favoured by most Argentine palates.

Except for the vacio. Slow-cooked and tender, smothered with roasted red peppers and onions, the meat and the crispy potatoes that accompanied it easily set themselves apart from the other dishes at the table. The vacio even paired well with the spritzers we improvised (by mixing soda water with a bottle of unspeakable red table wine from Bodegas Lopez).

Content and amused, we progressed to dessert and peppered Vicente with questions every time he whizzed past our table.

We were as enchanted by the caramel and cinnamon infused budin casero de pan (homemade bread pudding) as we were by the man.

“I’m a Spaniard first,” Vicente explained, “and a Galician second.”

Despite coming to Argentina as a boy in 1951, he retained a Spain-Spanish accent, ending almost every sentence with the vale? that one hears all over the Iberian peninsula.

While we devoured the budin casero, we also worked on a trucker-sized portion of flan. Made entirely of egg yolks and covered with a healthy layer of dulce de leche, the dessert bowled us over with sin and richness.

Taking breaths between bites of flan, we asked Vicente about the Friday-Saturday tango show advertised in the window.

“Oh, we haven’t done that for five years,” he laughed, “I had a choice. Either I would end up in the hospital or we would stop the show. So I chose to stop the show. I want a life, too, you know!”

Vicente brought us coffee on the house after we demolished the desserts. And the check? On the honor system. As we recited what we ordered, Vicente added up the prices table-side.

When we asked him to snap a photo, he happily obliged. The men at the table next door egged him on.

“Go photographer!” They teased, “Hey, why don’t you get in there, Vicente?”

While one man nudged Vicente into the picture, another climbed onto his chair to snap the final shot. The entire restaurant applauded.

“This place gets high points for attitude,” said my tango dancing companions.

And high points for embracing a group of strangers from another neighborhood.