Two months ago, a priest ate barbecue at Ismael Alba’s Argentinian restaurant, Buenos Aires, in the East Village, afterward calling him over and asking if he’d mind cooking up some more — for Pope Francis.
“I thought he was joking,” Alba, 56, of Manhattan, recalled Saturday.
The priest was Bernadito Auza, a Filipino archbishop who is also the 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 him and his mother-in-law, Maria De Marco, grilling lemon chicken for the pope for lunch Friday 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 home.
And police sniffer dogs had to approve of everything.
“They said if the dogs sit down, there’s a problem,” Alba recalled.
After the meal, Francis invited a nervous Alba to his side, telling him in Spanish, “The pope doesn’t bite you!”
Of his meal, he said, “I love it.”