We had only 72 hours in Santiago, the capital of Chile, so we didn’t have a lot of time to cover much culinary ground. However we did experience a few noteworthy taste highlights.
Top among them was the coffee. To our surprise and delight, we discovered that it was impossible to find a bad cup. Chileans generally prefer their coffee strong and black but occasionally lighten their espressos with a shot of hot milk; this is called a
cortado and became our morning wake-up call.
We were also pleasantly surprised by another beverage: could that really be raspberry juice on the menu?! After conferring with our pocket dictionary, we went ahead and ordered it. Sure enough, it was. I estimated that it must have taken at least two pints of pureed berries to fill my glass and couldn’t help but calculate the value of that deep-purple nectar. Our guide Peidad reminded us that fruit was one of Chile’s largest export products and assured me that raspberry juice was often on the menu in homes, too. Lucky Chileans.
By early afternoon we were ready for a light lunch and empanadas were the perfect snack. These are savory pastry pockets filled with all sorts of interesting combinations, sort of like a smaller-size version of an Italian calzone without any sauce. We tried the ground beef with green olive and the chicken varieties, both were great.
Our collective sweet tooth was more than satisfied with a three-hour chocolate tasting class at Dinkenesh, a boutique chocolatier run by a gregarious and extremely knowledgeable entrepreneur. Renata walked us through single-source chocolates from Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Venzuela, and two blends from Africa. We were encouraged to let the chocolate melt on our tongues and to record the flavors from start to finish. Undoubtedly influenced by the reference guide Renata distributed, we declared the chocolate to be “woodsy” or “smoky” or “tasting of whiskey and earth.” The terms were almost identical to those bandied about at serious wine tastings. The bottom line for us was quite simple however: there wasn’t a single kind we didn’t like. Following the tasting we got busy and made our own chocolate bars using a variety of dried fruit and nut toppings.
When it came time for dinner we knew we had to choose seafood: with over 2200 kilometers of coastline, Chile has a tremendous variety of incredibly fresh options year-round (Peidad summarized her country by comparing it to neighboring Argentina with a succinct “we are seafood, they are beef;” a diner’s shorthand that proved true). I tried a Peruvian-inspired
ceviche made with sea bass and lime juice, while Russ went for the miso-marinated tuna
tiradito. Katherine had grilled crab and Carter had a traditional shrimp and rice dish. We were all quite pleased with our selections and concluded that, overall, Chile was a fine place to eat.
