Chilean Food: The Good

As you may have read in my last post, Chilean food was not as enticing to me as Colombian food.  Don't despair, if you are one of the two or three people besides myself who actually reads the things I write, because I did, in fact, find things to eat that provided me with genuine enjoyment (and I ate those things over and over and over again)...

Homemade hostel dinner of pork and vegetable quesadillas
with one of my personal guacamole experiments (avocado,
merquen, garlic salt, tomato and a little hot sauce).

1. This country has some amazing avocados, and they put mashed avocado on EVERYTHING.  While I can't say I always approve of the portion sizes in Chile, I have to admit that eating a sandwich with half a pound of ripe, mashed avocado on top is a pretty satisfying experience.  Having found Chilean restaurant cuisine to be a little out of my preferred price range in relation to the quality of what I was getting, I spent a lot of time perfecting my personal guacamole recipe and making picnics with guacamole tacos.  I still get a little wistful when my friends share photographs from Chilean markets, or when I go to Kroger and touch the overpriced, hard-as-a-rock avocados I am supposed to accept as my consolation prize.

2. They have merquen.  Merquen, or merken, is a ground seasoning made from a chili pepper used in traditional Mapuche cooking.  Also, it's freaking awesome.  Any restaurant or cafe in Chile that's worth even walking into will have merquen on the table for use on pretty much everything you eat (meat, vegetables, pizza).  The flavor is a little bit spicy and a lot smoky, and it is very versatile.  My favorite use for merquen is to put an absurd amount of it into my mashed avocado (with garlic, salt and lime) for a nice smoky guacamole (which inevitably ends up on my homemade guacamole tacos).  I am now salivating.

3. Paila marina (if you find a good place to get it) is pretty much the best local cuisine in Chile.  When I am unsure about a local cuisine, I tend to put my trust in the local free city tours to steer me in the right direction.  Unlike an expensive paid

Paila marina from Pailas Blancas, in the Mercado Central.  I
went to this restaurant and ordered this dish every time a new
person came to Santiago and wanted to have lunch with me.

tour, these people, who work on tips, will tell you where to go to get food that is both delicious and cost effective.  On my second day in Santiago, I went on a tour where the tour guide would not stop talking about a seafood soup called paila marina, and pointing out which places had it on the menu.  Paila marina basically consists of some broth and a ridiculous amount of assorted seafood.  (Or, at least, it does if it's good.  A friend of mine had a bad paila marina at a bar that contained more onions than seafood, and in which all the seafood was grossly overcooked.)  A bowl of paila marina ordered at the Santiago fish market is very likely to be the single best thing you put in your mouth while traveling in Chile.  If served with a proper hot sauce (*note: finding a proper hot sauce in Chile is almost like finding a unicorn - they tend to be incredibly bland, and some do not contain even a hint of spice, consisting of nothing but chopped tomatoes with chopped onions), which, so far, I've only found at the restaurant pictured above or in my own backpack stash, it becomes almost a religious experience for the seafood lover.  Squid, octopus, mussels, clams, shrimp, fish and occasionally some other mystery seafood so thoroughly fill the bowl that I considered it almost a feat in competitive eating to consume this meal the three or four times I had it.

The prettiest fried empanada I ate:
tomato, cheese, spinach.  The best one was
shrimp and cheese, but it was less
photogenic.

4. The fried empanadas are good enough to compensate for the failure of the baked empanadas.  I thought empanadas in Chile were a bust until I went to Valparaiso, where the guide on the local free city tour took us to an empanada place that served them fried.  At that moment, I took back every bad sentiment I had expressed about Chilean empanadas.  While the dough remains a bread dough and not the crispy, amazing corn of its Colombian counterpart, far less excess bread goes into these warm, gooey treats, where the cheese actually melts properly and sometimes you might even detect the presence a vegetable (hooray for nutrients in my fried treats)! The only negative thing about fried empanadas in Chile is their limited availability compared to the less appealing baked ones.

*Bonus: The fried shrimp and cheese empanada, which I discovered in a tiny port town where I went to see penguins, is probably the second best thing I put into my mouth in Chile (after paila marina, you perv).

*Double bonus: When your travel companion tries to order empanada #6 and empanada #72, and, due to language barriers, orders six of empanada #72, leading to a full day of consuming nothing but fried empanadas!

Santa Emiliana was one of my favorites!

5. When all else fails, wine.  The thing about Chile is you don't have to like the food that much, because almost everything tastes good when you've had enough wine!  It's ubiquitous, it's delicious, and you can get some great stuff for about $3 USD per bottle.  So drink up!

Chilean Food: The Bad and the Ugly

Chilean food... What is it good for?  Well, it's good for spending a lot of money, getting really fat and feeling like you have a giant brick in your stomach.  (Actually, some of it tastes pretty good, but due to portion sizes only a linebacker could love, still qualifies as "the ugly".)

The Bad AND The Ugly:

I forget the name of this piece of feces masquerading as food that I
consumed one day in the aftermath of a massive wine hangover,
but I understand it to be tomatoes, cheese whiz and oregano on a
stale bun.  I believe I had to ask them to hold the mayonnaise. (because
what's processed meat and cheese whiz without mayo, right?)

Hot dogs.  Probably the most appalling thing about Chilean cuisine is the abundance of disgusting, heavily topped, mayonnaise-drenched crappy processed meat on stale bread that they like to refer to as hot dogs.  (Example: The Italiano.  It is not the remotest bit Italian, but dubbed as such because the massive quantities of mashed avocado, diced tomatoes and mayonnaise happen to make up the colors of the Italian flag.)  I would be completely shocked if someone told me that the mayonnaise alone on one of these things came to anything less than an average person's entire recommended daily allowance of calories and fat.

Because I could not bring myself to order one of these with the
mayonnaise, and I wanted to horrify you all with the image, I
stole this photo from a Wiki article entitled "Chilean completo".
(Photography credit: https://www.flickr.com/people/10039026@N03)

These hot dogs are everywhere.  Drunk Chileans and tourists swear by them. As for me, though I gave them two chances (ordering them without the half-tub of mayo that is put on each individual dog, because yuck), I could not bring myself to think they were anything but a device manufactured to slowly torture and kill the insides of the people of Chile.

Ick factor for hot dogs: 12 out of 10.

There's nothing in the photograph for scale, but the hamburger
buns pictured are probably the size of my head, if that helps.

The portion sizes.  Yes, I get it.  I'm an American.  I should have no basis upon which to criticize the portions of food served in another country, given the platters of hydrogenated crap served at some of our "fine" casual dining establishments... Well, you might think that if you've never been to Chile.  But if, like me, you've had the "pleasure" of perusing the food stands surrounding the Plaza de Armas in Santiago, or viewed, consumed or attempted to consume (without vomiting or getting your name on a plaque on the wall) one of their ubiquitous churrasco sandwiches, you understand that these people should definitely be beating out the tiny Asians at those international eating competitions.

Aforementioned sandwich.  This was actually delicious, just
not portioned for consumption by a single human.

I'm pretty sure there is not a meat sandwich in Chile that couldn't feed a starving family for at least a week.  The steak sandwich I ordered in the Punta Arenas airport, for example, featured about half a cow, a full tomato and two to three mashed avocados.  I thought I would never be able to eat again.  (And this was without the offered three tubs of mayonnaise that I declined to partake in.)  I'm pretty sure I lost at least a month from my total life expectancy by consuming this much beef in a period of less than a month, but hey, When in Chile...

Ick factor for portion sizes: 10/10.

The coffee.  I left behind one of the best coffee-producing areas in the world to visit a place that, despite its relative wealth, doesn't even TRY to serve decent coffee.  To my great despair, pretty much every breakfast in Chile came with a can of brown caffeinated powder made by Nestle, that one obligingly spoons into a cup with hot water and tries to drown the flavor of with milk and sugar.  I drank it like any good caffeine-addict would do, but I refuse to acknowledge that what is served as coffee in this country actually qualifies as coffee, or anything other than a delivery system for legal addictive stimulants.

Ick factor for coffee: 9/10.

The Bad

The baked empanadas that are really calzones without dipping sauce.  Well, you may have read my previous posts about the wonders of delicious fried empanadas in Colombia.  Empanada means different things in different places.  In Chile, of course, an empanada is about 3 or more times the size of what I would normally expect an empanada to be.  Also, in Chile an empanada is made more like a calzone.  The dough is essentially bread, and it is filled with meat, cheese, occasionally some tomatoes or onions, etc.  The problem with this is, in addition to using a name I do not approve of, it's just not as good as a calzone.  It's missing essential ingredients like liquidy cheese, tomato sauce or hot sauce to dip it in, and there's entirely too much bread.

Empanada de Pino.  Carne, onions, an olive, a pickled egg.  This
is a traditional Chilean snack that is sometimes good depending
on who makes it.  I would still prefer less bread and more sauce.

Granted, it's not the worst thing to eat in Chile (see above about their hot dogs), and I did occasionally snack on one to hold me over between meals (and by "between meals", I mean "all day", because they're typically big)... But really.  How hard is it to serve things that need sauce with sauce?!?!?!  HOW HARD?!?!?!

Ick factor for baked empanadas: 5/10.



Their fast food places that serve pizza with a side of fries (and NO CONDIMENTS)!!!

Why?  Just WHY?

It was one of those days in Chile where I'd had a little wine the night before (these things happen when good wine costs $3 a bottle), and I was looking for something greasy to get me through the day... When my wanderings to find a kebab place in my Santiago neighborhood revealed no such places to be open during dinner on a Monday, I walked into the closest junk food establishment, Telepizza, where the personal pan pizzas come with a side of fries.

This in itself is slightly horrifying to one who values the functionality of the human body, but upon delivering my meal to me, I was told that the place had absolutely zero condiments with which to adorn the mess I had decided against my better judgment to consume.  Yes, let that one sink in.  Fries without dipping sauce.  These people have such bad taste in food that they just eat fries by themselves.  (*Shudder*)

Ick factor for Telepizza: 6.5/10.

The Mediocre/Slightly Disappointing

The produce.  Now, perhaps this is because I had just spent three months reveling in some of the best produce I have ever consumed in Colombia, but I was a little let down when I walked into supermercados in Chile and saw little more than the apples, bananas and under-ripe tomatoes I can get at home in the U.S.  (Caveat: If you go to the farmers' markets you can get some of the lovely produce that is imported from other parts of South America.  It's just not as convenient or cheap as other places I've visited.)

Ick factor for produce: 3/10.

In short, go to Chile for the mountains and stay for the penguins (and bring your antacid).  There is plenty of delicious food to be found in Argentina, Colombia and Peru.