Hernán Firpo
06/20/2020 - 9:01
- Clarín.com
- Shows
This happened 40 years ago in one of those pizzerias that can show off in a frieze shirt. We are talking about the relevant Angelin pizzeria in Villa Crespo. Bah, Palermo or Villa Crespo? Both neighborhoods have been fighting for years for their territorial condition, and there is even a dean real estate agency able to swear that the proximity to Angelin, in Córdoba at 5,200, is reason enough for the properties to be a little more expensive.
Rappi, Glovo, Orders Now. The essential is invisible to motorcycles. A kind of diplomatic immunity makes them exclusive protagonists of the pandemic. But this also had a beginning. This is where the story goes. Due to the Buenos Aires origin of delivery.
A legend that is associated with two or three large pieces of mozzarella, four fugazzetas and several slices of pizza on the field, a specialty of the house. The interested party was none other than Frank Sinatra, who arrived in Argentina at the age of 65, without being at the best moment of his career. Ten days. That was how long Sinatra's visit to our country lasted, where he landed on August 2, 1981. The tickets came out a thousand dollars and we had a 400% devaluation that complicated the producer of the shows, Ramón “Palito” Ortega.
Sinatra's autographed painting kept by Pizzeria Angelín. Photo by Mario Quinteros.
On August 5 Frank Sinatra and his clan wanted to eat pizza. Palito, who acted as a long-suffering host, felt a sudden delight at the kind of appetite manifested by the best performer of My Way . Suddenly, all of his businessman regrets were sidelined against the size of the recommendation he was about to make.
Several versions arose from Sinatra's craving. The current owner of Angelín , Gustavo Pintos , third generation of the inventor of the “pizza de cancha” –literally registered brand- says that the Ortega family is and was a habit. It seems that Julieta and Luis, the film director, more than Rosario –Charly García's soloist- and even more than Emanuel, singer and composer. Evangelina and Palito , life partners. A parishioner even remembers seeing Ivan Noble at the counter. Julieta's ex, and Los Caballeros de la Quema, smiling and talking a trick with all the beans of his bohemia & moscato.
Palito is said to have risked his nickname in Angelin by scoring countless servings each time. It was he, in his perfect spanglish, who spoke to Sinatra about a certain pizzeria:
-Hey, Frank, you need an Angelin pizza.
Sinatra listens and slaps her cheek fondly.
-Argentinian pizza ?? -The celebrity accustomed to Domino's and Grimaldi's, from New York, was amazed, pastrami and pesto pizza, it seems.
"Yes, my friend, Angelin is the best," Palito returned.
Sinatra stretched his jaw forward as Marlon Brando did in The Godfather and with the smiling corner of sarcasm he repeated: "Angelino ...", eh?
-Angelin, Frank. An-ge-lín, 'corrected our dear singer-songwriter.
Sinatra was Sinatra so we are talking about a man whose favorite word was "no". So accustomed that he set his terms. What did he want? "He wanted them to close the place only for him and his guests," recalls Gustavo, the current owner. "My old man, who was at the front at the time (Oscar), did not want to."
Tense moment. Parenthesis.
There is a guy, whose name is irrelevant, who says he worked at Golden Lights in 1985, and that this company was the first delivery manager in Argentina. You googled "Golden Lights" and you get a cover of The Smiths and a Kent "Golden Lights", king size, menthol.
Delivery is not that you bring a mattress to your house. It has nothing to do with that. He is a waiter, but a motorized waiter or cyclist who brings you the empanadas and the kilo of ice cream. The difference between one waiter and another is that while one enjoys his lineage even with traditional marathons in Mar del Plata, the other is a messenger whom, in any case, we kill symbolically if the order is delayed longer than necessary.
The delivery subject receives a tip, not love. He is a waiter without daily treatment or his own name. The turn you leave him is reduced to a gesture of education, courtesy, delicacy. All acts of service that are not associated with greatness, much less waste.
The truth is that delivery, that infinite restaurant, was about to start writing its history in the imaginary of the city when Sinatra stood firm and said that there was no way he was going to leave his central hotel suite to go somewhere where there was more. people.
It seems that there was more than one call to Oscar's place and in each and every one the owner of Angelín said yes, that it would be an honor, an enormous pleasure, but that he was not prepared - "nor used" - that his pizzeria had a single customer.
From this local located in Córdoba at 5,200 the first delivery service in the city was made. The recipient, Frank Sinatra. Photo by Mario Quinteros
Sinatra and his routines advanced confinement by almost half a century. They tried to convince him. They told him it was a little while in the car and he was walking the city a bit, but no, no, no and no. "Bring her here," he heard himself.
Pizzerias, empanadas and ice creams, it is known, monopolize almost 85 percent of the delivery movement. At the time, however, the initiative was most outrageous.
-What do we take the pizzas to the hotel ?!
Of course, delivery is now a reflex act. So it is necessary to have this level of uncertainty. To be able to locate ourselves in time and space. Argentina, mid 1981. That year the first Laverrap opened, it was a decade for the parripollo, and 11 years for the incipient paddle boom. Not even the taste of “banana split” ice cream existed.
In Angelin there was a small deliberation that ended in delivery.
"Then," says Gustavo, "we sent some pizzas to the hotel where Sinatra was staying." It is seen that they liked them and dedicated an autographed photo to us that he sent us and we have it framed in the living room for all to see.
Was the first shipment in our history made on a motorcycle? No, by car. Sinatra found it difficult to understand that this type of routine was "an exception", because since the 1960s Domino's worked with delivery, and Sinatra knew this better than anyone. That foundational distribution was not made on two wheels either, but with a small fleet of Volkswagen beetles that Tom Monaghan himself, owner of the Yankee chain, imposed promising delivery in less than 30 minutes. If Tom's boys arrived after hours, the price of the order was paid by the pizzeria.
Many years later we asked Gustavo, the owner of Angelin, if he was aware that the transport to Sinatra had meant the national invention of a new way of being. Gustavo thought, thought and shrugged: "It could be, yes, but we were already bringing pizza to Charly García."
WD
