No location is complete unless I discuss the food, and with
3.5 weeks in Chile, I had plenty of time to sample the goods. Let’s be honest, the only real reason you are
reading this blog is for the nitty gritty on the grub. And by “you”, I mean you, Jenny.
A few highlights of my food in Santiago and the rest of Chile:
Restaurants:
One of my 103 Things is a restaurant called La Piojera. Once a hot spot for diplomats and the rich
and famous, today the restaurant is filled with businessmen entertaining
out-of-town visitors and… tacky tourists like me! The small traditional menu left me with limited
options (damn you, pork!) but I settled on a cazuela – a traditional Chilean
beef soup. Delicious!
I also ate at El Pollo Caballo, a restaurant which serves
traditional type chicken dishes. The
name translates to “the chicken horse” and its logo is a rooster riding a
horse. This is the main reason I asked
Claudio to take me here. I’m a sucker
for a horse cock! Elsewhere in the world
of restaurants, I ate at Crepes & Waffles about a dozen times over my two
weeks in Santiago. I also walked into
the first Wendy’s in Chile only to find that they didn’t have the Frosty dairy
dessert. Fuck you, Wendy’s in
Chile. I walked out.
Drinks:
For any of you wine drinkers out there, you know that Chile
is famous for its wine. Claudio took me
on a day trip to Viña Cousiño-Macul – a winery
close enough to the city to take the metro and a five minute Uber ride. We toured the winery and sampled a few of
their products before purchasing quite a few bottles to bring back to his
house. For more traditional drinks, I
ordered a mote con huesillo which is a peach drink with some sort of husked
wheat or barley or sweet corn in it. I
don’t know exactly what was in the cup, but I scarfed it down with my spoon and
drank what was left of the peach. A
terremoto – which translates to “earthquake” in Spanish – is cheap ass wine
fortified with hard liquor and topped with sorbet. They called it the terremoto because it feels
like the earth is shaking after you drink one.
For champions, another drink which translates to “aftershock” is
available after finishing the terremoto.
I was not a champion. Speaking of
alcohol, pisco is a super popular liquor in Chile. Much like the pavlova dispute between
Australia and New Zealand, Chile constantly fights with Peru about where pisco
is from. Peruvians claim that it’s from
Pisco, a city in Peru, which makes sense.
But Peru stops making sense when they ban Chilean pisco from entering
the country. Come on… get over it.
While terremotos and pisco sours are nice, I need a coffee
in the morning. I found a few decent
cafes in Santiago which served coffee that was good, but not quite as good as
in Australia. Starbucks, however, was
advertising and pushing hard the flat whites, a very Australian thing to
do. For those Americans reading this, a
flat white is sort of like a latte but different. It’s an Australian invention and they’ve
launched it globally and every Starbucks in Chile had a big sign that said “Que
es un Flat White?” (“What is a Flat White?”)
I am super pleased that Australia is taking over the world. Speaking of Australia taking over the world,
Boost was also present in Chile! Again,
for the Americans reading this, Boost is basically the Australian version of
Jamba Juice. I was super stoked to see
Boost, but super disappointed that they didn’t have my favourite drink: the Green Tea Mango Mantra. Bah, humbug!
A local soda named “Pap” made me giggle for a while. It’s papaya flavoured soda.
On a side note, my favourite drink discovery while in Latin
America was the Vanilla Rooibus tea from Starbucks. It was all over Latin America but it’s not at
Starbucks in the USA. WTF, Starbucks???
Dessert:
Yes, I had dessert.
Because I fucking love dessert.
And that dessert took the form of ice cream from two places in
Santiago: the super famous Emporio La
Rosa and the less famous Heladeria Mo. I
liked them both equally. Emporio La Rosa
claims that they are one of the 25 best ice creams in the world. I’m not sure where that comes from, but their
ice cream was super delicious. Heladeria
Mo was also super delicious and I think their variety of flavours was superior
to Emporio La Rosa.
Chilean food:
In addition to the cazuela, my
Chilean food staple was empanadas. Lots
of empanadas. Empanadas are found all
over Latin America but they originate in Chile.
And I could eat them all day long.
Seriously. I also had a homemade
sopapilla made my Claudio’s mum.
Yummy! And that’s about all I can
think of when I think of super traditional Chilean foods. And the reason for that is…
International food:
Santiago has a ton of
international food. It’s a big city and it’s
pretty cosmopolitan so this fact shouldn’t come as a surprise. I had Mexican food in Santiago (surprise!)
and Chinese food. I had plenty of pizza
and Italian food, went to a vegetarian restaurant, and devoured a handful of
churros. But I mainly stuck to the most
popular Chilean foods, which are Peruvian food and sushi. Let me explain.
Peruvian food:
Ok, so the USA has Mexican
food. Australia has Thai food. And Britain has Indian food. Chile is greedy and they’ve adopted two types
of cuisine as their own: Peruvian food
and sushi. Everywhere you go, you’ll see
Peruvian food. And sushi. Not in the same restaurants, of course. Peruvian food is ubiquitous. It’s hard to walk a block without stumbling
on a Peruvian restaurant. They are
everywhere! And this is fine. Peruvian food isn’t too spicy which sits well
with Chileans. Peru is also next door so
there are quite a few Peruvians in Chile to cook their cuisine. I didn’t complain, though I only had Peruvian
food once because I was heading to Peru next and figured I should save the
Peruvian food for when I’m actually in Peru.
Chilean chicken sushi:
Sushi, on the other hand, was put into my mouth a hell of a
lot of times. Like, a lot a lot. Mainly because there weren’t too many
restaurants around near where I was staying except for a decent sushi
joint. Like Peruvian food, sushi is
everywhere in Santiago… and Chile in general.
It’s not Japanese quality, but it’s still pretty good. The funny thing is that the most common type
of sushi that I saw was chicken sushi.
I know that’s weird, but let me explain.
Once upon a time, there was a problem with the fish around
the coast of Chile. I think there was
algae or something that the salmon were eating and therefore made them unfit for
human consumption. Or something like
that. So, faced with a lack of salmon,
and with tuna being very expensive in Chile, sushi restaurants began to
substitute with chicken – cooked chicken of course (because only in Japan can
people get away with eating raw chicken and not die). People apparently liked the chicken sushi and
it stuck. Also in Chilean sushi are
rolls are that lightly cooked. They
bread the outside of the roll and lightly cook it. I don’t think it’s fried because it wasn’t
oily or greasy at all, but they somehow cook it and make it warm and a wee bit
crispy on the outside. Who knew?
I like Chilean sushi.
A+ for taking a cuisine and making it your own without totally
destroying it. I’m looking at you, Cuban
pizza.
Ok, now that I’ve talked about the food, I can get back to
our regularly scheduled programming. I
visited two more locations in Chile:
Punta Arenas and Easter Island.
Those blogs are coming right up. I
don’t have a selfie of me eating Chilean food (because my hands are always full
of food and not my phone or camera) so this will have to do.
To see more photos of my food in Santiago, see my other
Chilean albums. I didn’t have enough to
make a complete album. Santiago food was
super good, but let’s be honest: it was
no Mexico City. Nowhere is.
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