“Thirteen-year-old Obi-Wan wasn’t a Master…or even a Jedi Knight…yet. As an apprentice, he had a long journey ahead. But even an apprentice could feel the dark tremors rippling under the calm surface of Galu, the capital city of Gala. Obi-Wan couldn’t see to the end of the mission, but he could already sense that success would be hard-won, and far from assured.”

– Jude Watson, Jedi Apprentice: The Mark of the Crown

Buenos Aires – The most likely explanation for a new restaurant named Galu, Chile 342 in San Telmo, is that it’s simply the owner’s last name or knickname – it’s common enough to be so. Still, I can’t resist a bit of dredging about on the internet to find that Galu is also a fictional city from the Star Wars series of books, that in three different African languages it means dog, and between four other languages translates to fortune, anchor, gall and mouse. Irrelevant, but at least passably interesting. [Closed]

The restaurant, however, is more than passably interesting. Only open a couple of months in a space formerly occupied by an ice cream parlor, and decorated with a variety of cartoon figures for Los Simpson – Homer and Mo seem to make the most appearances – the place is turning out some quite good pizzas. They’re definitely Argentine style, with not quite enough sauce and way too much cheese, but the crust is delicious and cooked beautifully, what sauce there is is zippy and flavorful, and the quality of the mozzarella is above that of most spots of the genre. The toppings were just fine… more on those below….

Service is a little on the lackadaisical side and required a bit of hand-waving to get anyone’s attention, despite the fact that we were the only ones there. Too, they’re sort of “getting their act together” – despite a chalkboard menu listing four pizza combinations that were available, our waiter asserted that only two actually were (the choices – plain cheese; ham and cheese; peppers and cheese; ham, peppers and cheese) – since we ordered the last of those, the other choice being plain cheese, we were left wondering exactly how only two of the four selections were actually available…. Our waiter, however, had a slightly glazed look that suggested that asking him to explain it would likely result in some sort of meltdown – it was hard enough for him to deal with our not ordering the “combo” which included a pitcher of beer (“but everyone has beer with the pizzas”), opting for sodas instead.

The spot is located on that strip of Chile downhill from Defensa that has been for several years a sort of restaurant row of mediocre spots. This one is, at least for casual food, the highlight of the block.