When the sun sets, well-to-do Montevideans head to Pocitos and Punta Carretas, on a peninsula a few minutes' taxi ride from the city center. In these mostly residential neighborhoods, some of the capital's best restaurants occupy gracious old houses.
Between its dark wood floors and ceilings, Da Pentella mixes fresh pasta and nightly specials like roast suckling pig and stuffed rabbit. Not far away, La Perdiz, a buzzing local favorite, offers fresh seafood like grilled chipirones (baby squid) in garlic and oil, as well as the usual meats, in portions that are big enough to share.
Afterward, it's back to the Old City, where the streets around Bartolome Mitre and Sarandi quickly fill up with outdoor seating for the city's busiest bars.
For something a bit quieter, you can retreat to Carrasco, a leafy enclave of the moneyed classes on the east side of Montevideo that boasts a remarkable variety of birdlife. Carrasco even has its own English-style country hotel in the Belmont House, with the requisite antiques as well as portraits by Juan Manuel Blanes, one of Uruguay's best-known 19th-century painters.
It's worth walking down to the Rambla, past the Argentine ambassador's splendid residence, to see the monstrous hulk of the Hotel Casino Carrasco. Built in 1921, the graying colossus is undergoing a much-needed renovation.
Back inland a block or two are several of Carrasco's finer restaurants, notably Baltasar, which opened in 2005. “The majority of the clientele are families from here, but some also come from Pocitos and Punta Carretas,” says Fernando de Castro, Baltasar's owner.
The trip to Carrasco from the center takes about 20 minutes by car, and longer by bus. But it's clearly not just geography that separates Carrasco from the modest living in the rest of Montevideo.
That split between the classes leaves Eduardo Lopez, the coin seller, feeling worried. “There's a high unemployment rate,” he says. “The middle class is disappearing. You're poor or you're rich.”
But Virginia, the architect, who seems pretty middle class, says she isn't planning to leave. “It doesn't seem like life's better in other countries,” she says, adding that she spent a couple of months working in Coral Gables, Florida. “There are different things, but not better ones.”
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