East Village chef’s papal grill thrill
Two months ago, a Filipino priest ate barbecue at Ismael Alba’s Argentinian restaurant, Buenos Aires, in the East Village, afterward calling Alba over and asking if he’d mind cooking some more — for the pope.
“I thought he was joking,” Alba, 56, of Manhattan, recalled Saturday.
But the priest was Bernadito Auza, permanent observer of the Holy See to the United Nations, and he was not joking.
That day launched Alba and his devoutly Catholic family on a religious and culinary adventure, culminating with Alba and his motherinlaw, Maria De Marco, grilling lemon chicken for Pope Francis to eat for Friday lunch at his temporary home on East 72nd Street.
“It’s like touching the sky,” Alba said of feeding Francis, a fellow Argentine native.
The pope needed a special diet — chicken, no spices, no salt. Secrecy was essential, he was told, “for the holy man’s safety.”
The grill — specially designed for Argentinian style cooking, in which the meat is raised and lowered repeatedly over three hours — had to be disassembled to fit down a spiral staircase at the 72nd Street home. And the police sniffer dogs had to approve of everything.
“They said if the dogs sit down, there’s a problem,” Alba said.
After the meal, Francis invited the nervous Alba to his side, telling him in Spanish, “The pope doesn’t bite you!”
Of his meal, he said, “I love it.”