“What would you like for dinner?” the house chef, Marilu, asked us in Spanish. And we stood puzzling at her, since our Spanish is not that good.
Eventually we figured it out, and I suggested carne asada — grilled steak. It had clearly been sometime since any houseguests had requested this, since the grill was in an advanced state of rust decomposition, and much of the staff’s time that afternoon was spent scrubbing, soaking and scouring it. More