I am not sure what I expected in Chilean food, but it was not what I expected. Well, I suppose I expected something more Mexican, with heat, sharp and tangy flavors. But this I will say, I do not find the country to be a culinary destination. Their most famous dish, the Completo, is basically a hot dog with fixings in different garnishes. If it has avocado, mustard, ketchup and mayonnaise, after the colors of the Italian flag it is called a Completo Italiano, or if simply with sauerkraut, called a Completo Completo (really). That should give you a sense of the culinary level they strive for. And also the Chilean’s slavish adoration of Europe.
They have empanadas, churrascos (a fancy name for a sandwich, from what I could tell) and pastel de choco, a kind of stew with corn bread on top. Nice, filling and homey stuff, but you don’t need to fly 10,000 km to eat it. Italian cuisine seems to hold much sway. It is as though the Chileans have wearily ceded their cuisine to Europe and then only took the blandest of parts of it. Every second dish seemed to be derived from Ecuador or Peru, and I recall thinking, “I must go to Peru to eat.” Coffee is easy to come by, but not particularly good. I mean the local types. Of course the worldwide mania for artisanal coffee has come to Chile—it follows moneyed youth—but the quotidian tradition of delicious daily coffee that flourishes in Mexico does not seem to have arrived here. The wonderful chocolates and mochas of Central America are nowhere in sight. I tried some chocolate only to be given a cup of what tasted like powdered Hershey’s. The best cup of coffee I had was in a tiny town in the mountains above the Atacama desert plain, Machuca. There, they follow the old Mexican tradition of handing you a cup of hot milk and water and point you to the Nescafe instant, that marvelous instant coffee of Latin America that has not seemed to have found its way into the upper countries of North America.
However, we cannot write off Chile food altogether. Seafood, for a country that has over 6,000km of coastline, figures large. There are tasty ceviches, Chilean sea bass, the ever present and delicious merluza, hake fish, razor clams and, of course, the famous Conger eel soup.
Pablo Neruda even wrote a poem called Ode to Conger Chowder. The first few lines are below. The rest of the poem is pretty much a recipe.
In the storm-tossed Chilean sea
Lives the rosy conger,
Giant eel of snowy flesh.
And in Chilean stewpots,
Along the coast,
Was born the chowder, thick and succulent,
A boon to man
Not exactly poetic? I agree, here’s the original Spanish, and even with my limited knowledge is much better, particularly the first line.
Oda Al Caldillo De Congrio
En el mar tormentoso de Chile
Vive el rosado congrio,
Gigante anguila de nevada carne.
Y en las ollas chilenas,
En la costa,
Nació el caldillo grávido y suculento,
Provechoso.
Chilean wine, much heralded in North America for its full-blooded reds, seems in short supply in Chile itself (incidentally, what I found with Darjeeling tea in Darjeeling). I guess they export most of it. Of course, there’s beer, the same pale lager style you see in most Latin American countries: Cristal, Escudo, Morenita. Again, you don’t need to fly 10,000 km to drink this type of beer. One high point is pisco aguardiente, the national spirit, a byproduct of wine making. The term pisco itself refers to a kind of amphora used to make the spirit in the early days, but now is the name of the spirit itself. I never drank it straight, but its most famous derivative cocktail is called the pisco sour – lime juice, sugar and egg white shaken with ice. – the same type of sour cocktail we use for whiskey for. In the heat and the dust, this tart, cold, slightly foamy cocktail with an attractive smoky yellow colour is perfect in the afternoon.
So what can I say? Go to Chile, for its geography, the unique wonders of the Atacama desert, the stunning mountainscapes of Patagonia, the thousands of miles of coastline. But don’t go for the food.
