Santiago, Chile – Seafood, Friends, and More Seafood

Total Miles Traveled: 12,096

After a couple of days of wine tasting in Colchagua Valley, we headed back to Santiago in Chile.  For us, Santiago represented two things – friends and seafood, as you’ll see in the photos featured here.

Pictured above, we’re at dinner with Sergio and his wife Marina.  Sergio is a former criminal attorney who, after going to Florida (Hallandale) for a year sabbatical, ended up staying there for several more years.  It was there he met his neighbor, George, whose son Eddie, is a good friend of mine (Tony) from my days at NetworkOil in Houston.  I had met Sergio at Eddie’s wedding a few years ago, and looked him up before we headed down to South America.

Sergio took us to George’s favorite place, Casa Vieja, in the Nunoa neighborhood.  And the way they treated Sergio, it seemed like he was the Godfather – he knew all the waiters, had his favorite waiter, and his favorite table.   Here’s a mixed seafood dish with calamari, shrimp, razor clams, and clams:

We also got the opportunity to meet up with Nico B. and his wife, and Meto. Z, classmates from MIT Sloan and native Chileans.  We caught up over, you guessed it, another seafood dinner. 🙂  Nico had “congrio a lo pobre” which was an impressive, heart-unhealthy dish – but looked oh so tasty.  Unfortunately, I must have been in so much awe that I forgot to take a picture!  Anyway, congrio is a cod-like fish (called “kingclip” in South Africa – Lisa’s favorite fish of all time) and very popular in Chile.  “a lo pobre” means literally “of the poor”, but the preparation is fried, with onions, and fried egg.  Yum.

Getting our priorities straight – eating seafood

Since we had been eating beef for 6 weeks while we were in Argentina, our highest priority in Santiago was to eat seafood.  And so, one of the first things we did was visit the seafood market in Santiago!

The seafood market is an experience in itself – part of the building is dedicated to actually selling seafood with fishmongers hawking passersby, whether they were tourists or potential customers.  We were warned about carrying flashy cameras around for fear of them being stolen, but having been there now, I’d say it’s OK , especially when it’s not busy.   Definitely potential for lots of great photos, but alas, this is the best I could manage between my anxiety and all the hawkers constantly talking to us:

The other side of the building is full of restaurants and as soon as you cross from the market in to the “food court” area, you’re accosted by waiters/promoters who ask if you’re hungry or how they’ve got the best seafood.  You can’t take a few steps without a new waiter coming up to hawk you and you saying “No gracias”.  Think it’s competitive in there?

In any case, we didn’t feel like getting roped in to any hole in the wall, so we opted for where we saw the most people eating, which was out in the open.  We ordered “curanto” (pictured below), which is a famous seafood stew from the island of Chiloe in south-central Chile near the Lakes District.  We didn’t visit Chiloe because it was raining the whole time we were near by, and the only thing we really wanted to try had been the curanto.  Looking back, we probably should have gone just to have a look around because the Chileans say it has a totally different culture due to the Indian tribes that live there.

Curanto is like the trash can soup.  It includes all kinds of shellfish (clams, razor clams, oysters, abalone, mussels), fish, big slabs of ham, a quarter chicken, and sausage, all thrown in to a pot and stewed for hours.   The result is a really REALLY flavorful broth as you imagine.  The seafood itself might have been better prepared some other way so it would be less tough from overcooking/boiling, but nevertheless, it was fresh and still very good.   The picture below is “before” we dug in, but the “after” photo wouldn’t look much different – and we left feeling VERY full.

On another afternoon, we went to Bar Liguria which is a well-known chain here in Santiago.  It features rich, comfort food and a wide selection of tragos (mixed drinks).

Here’s a cazuela de loco – or abalone casserole.  Our guidebook said that loco was a delicacy here, and although I had tried it in a salad in Vina del Mar (which I couldn’t finish by the way because I really didn’t like the texture of cold, boiled loco), I decided to  give it another shot.   I though it was going to be a hearty stew, but didn’t expect to see this below.  Well, between all the cheese and cream and other rich stuff inside (I think there was sausage), I was bound to like it.   Do you think I did?

Well, it was good, but wayyy too rich.  I couldn’t even finish it.  And I’m convinced now that I still don’t like abalone.  Just too chewy and I don’t like the flavor.   I guess I do have dietary restrictions after all.

Lisa got a braised cordero (goat) served in ragout, to take a break from all the seafood we had been eating.  It was good, but we’ve had better in Argentina.

Another dish we ordered a lot of was Peruvian-style ceviche, where the lime-marinated fish is served in chunks with thinly sliced red onion, avocado, cilantro, and sometimes spicy peppers.   We prefer it spicy because it has a lot more kick to it and it was soooooo good to have spicy again (while the Argentines love salt, they don’t like hot spice)

Santiago is more than just food

So we did do more than just eat in Santiago…  We managed to get out of our small hotel room at Hotel Orly in the Providencia neighborhood and explore the city.  Here’s a photo from inside the hotel – pick a room, any room.  Reminds us of buildings in New York.

Here’s one of the pedestrian malls/promenades in the central business area/centro of Santiago.  Packed with people and good for people watching.

And finally, we took an afternoon walk up to the Parque Metropolitano, up Cerro San Cristobal (hill) to get a few of Santiago above.  Unfortunately, the gondolas were out of operation (maybe from the earthquake?) and it was a bit hazy/smoggy that day.

At this point, we had to make a decision of where to go next.  Mostly for budget reasons, we ended up deciding to go back to Argentina.  We would spend time in Mendoza for a few days before heading to Salta in northwest Argentina.

Here’s the complete set of photos from our time in Santiago (but FYI you’ve seen most of them already): http://www.flickr.com/photos/tony-chen/sets/72157623960164372/show/