I could not resist The House of Empanadas. It would be sort of like being in Tokyo and passing up the House of Noodles or something like that. Or whatever. Clearly my logic is flawed here. But empanadas are Argentina’s thing amiright? Besides there was a pretty good crowd in there. Ok, I admit it, my Spanish sucks. It should be better. I try to convince myself I get around ok. I can talk about the weather and places and traffic. I talk to a lot of taxi drivers in «Spanish» But after that, I’m pretty much toast. Really what drives me into places like House of Empanadas is starvation. I wander around until I can’t stand it anymore and then blunder in. Case in point… Tonight I thought I was ordering 4 empanadas. Or more correctly: two orders of 2. I figured the worst case was I ordered two orders of 4. Not so. I soon discovered I was the proud owner of 24 empanadas. Large empanadas. I guess I should have realized when the gentleman kept repeating«dos y quatro… dos y quatro…» that he was saying«2 and 4» for or «twenty-four» for idiots like the one standing in front of him. I had already eaten a pizza — the burnt crust in a brick oven captured my attention 30 minutes earlier. I simply wanted to try the empanadas. The two I sampled were among the best I’ve ever eaten. Plus they were super friendly in there. PS — I’m going to go to a Spanish immersion language course in Costa Rica. I don’t think I’ll learn Spanish, but I love Costa Rica so it should work out.