No one would claim that Chile produces one of the world’s greatest cuisines.
In South America alone it is far outclassed by the broad and complex culinary traditions of Mexico, and by the deft sophistication emerging from Peruvian kitchens these days. And yet, on a recent visit, I savored some of the best meals I’ve had in a long time. It was not always thus.
On my previous trip to Santiago, in 1995, I sampled simple yet tasty foods offered by street vendors, but most of the “fancy” restaurants I frequented dished up fare that was decidedly uninspiring. On this most recent trip, however, things had changed.
Thanks to an overall upturn in the country’s economy, and therefore to a more affluent and sophisticated dining clientele, today’s cuisine is notable for its imaginative and uncluttered approach to indigenous and seasonal ingredients. Keeping pace with Chile’s current culinary achievements, the country’s wines also have improved impressively — indeed, the very best ones can be ranked among top premium labels from any of the world’s fine-wine-producing regions.
I was in Santiago only a few days this time, but long enough to be introduced to a handful of restaurants that I would happily return to again if they were in my own back yard. Here are some gustatory snapshots: the stunning pairing of velvety home-cured gravlax with a glass of pear-scented 2003 Terrunyo Chardonnay for example, savored at the small, intimate Europeo Restaurant. My mouth also waters when I think about the grilled razor clams with fava beans at the superb El Otro Sitio, the sweet meatiness of the shellfish counterbalanced by the creamy spiciness of Max Reserva Syrah 2000.
At Astrid & Gaston (considered by some locals the city’s finest eatery) I had baby goat (so meltingly tender it was positively confit-like) beautifully matched by the full flavors of elegant 2002 Amelia Chardonnay.
This immensely satisfying offering was followed by a toothsome tuna steak perched on slick of black bean puree, with threads of fried orange peel scattered over the top, with a soft, plumy 1999 Don Melcor Cabernet Sauvignon linking together the dish’s multitude of flavors.
“Latin food is very fresh. Most sauces are based on herbs, and the fruits and vegetables here have particularly intense aromas and flavors,” said Ruth Van Waerebeek-Gonzalez one afternoon as she confidently sliced onions into thin rounds. “New World wines are particularly well suited to Chilean cuisine because they tend to be fruitier and less acidic,” she continued. I was sitting in on a cooking demonstration/tasting being held at Vinos CYT, a retail wine shop owned by Concha Y Toro, Chile’s biggest wine company. The Belgian-born Van Waerebeek-Gonzalez, who is married to a Chilean and is the author of a fine volume of homestyle recipes entitled “The Chilean Kitchen” (HPBooks, 1999), is passionate about the cuisine of her adopted country.
After rinsing the onions to soften their sting, she patted them dry and doused them with olive oil, a splash of lemon juice and a handful of minced cilantro. “Lemon juice can be an important bridge between the food and the wine,” Van Waerebeek-Gonzalez explained. “The acidity of the lemon balances the acidity in the wine.” Other standard bridges between food and wine, she said, are buttery sauces (“a classic with chardonnay”) and avocado, which can tone down an acidic wine’s tartness.
Van Waerebeek-Gonzalez’ theories held up to the test when the foods she’d prepared were tasted with a selection of Casillero del Diablo wines. The onion salad and a crisp Sauvignon Blanc formed the fine partnership she had predicted. The lush texture and taste of avocado, a component in her sea scallop seviche, did indeed link all the diverse flavors in the dish to the substantial body and ripe tropical fruit flavors of the Chardonnay paired with it. Carmen re (“a wonderful wine for food,” said Van Waerebeek-Gonzalez) accentuated the complex and zesty flavors of pork kebobs marinated in quince paste and served with a green sauce spiked with chives, scallions, cilantro, parsley.
While Santiago boasts a growing number of stylish, upscale restaurants, in outlying districts one can still find straightforward, authentic, traditional Chilean fare, things such as bocadillos (mini empanadas filled with meat or seafood), pastel de choclo (a sort of pie with meat, chicken, corn, olives) and humitas (creamy corn steamed in corn husks).
Chileans love their postres (desserts). The national sweet tooth revels in pastries and puddings, cakes and candies, fritters and fruits. Consider that the backbone of Chilean desserts (dulces chilenos) is manjar, an achingly sweet caramel confection, and you get the idea. Chilean fruit is as sweet and full flavored as any I’ve ever had, especially the big plump strawberries, whose ancestors were the original strawberries we’re all familiar with (until Fragaria chelensis was introduced eleswhere, the rest of the world knew no strawberries other than tiny fraises de bois).
Because the ocean is never far away (this long narrow country has 2,600 miles of coastline) its seafood can be outstanding. In Valparaiso, for example, an ancient port city facing a wide bay in the middle of the coast, one can find any number of restaurants specializing in creatures from the sea. In neighboring Vina del Mar I had a wonderfully simple lunch one day that included pil-pil shrimp sauteed in a little oil with garlic, chiles and a sprinkling of salt — and congrio frito a la plancha (fried conger eel).
Symbolic, perhaps, of Chile’s love of good food and wine is the fact that her greatest poet wrote eloquently about such things. After my seafood feast at Restaurant Pacifico, I went to visit Pablo Neruda’s house (the poet’s home is now a small museum open to visitors). La Sebastiana — named for its Spanish builder Sebastian Collado, who began work on the house in the mid 20th century — sits high on an urban hill, surrounded by greenery and overlooking the water. Neruda, who would be celebrating his hundredth birthday this year (he died in 1973), traveled widely during his lifetime, both through his career in the diplomatic service and as a refugee in the 1940s during Chile’s political upheavals. Despite being on the go so much of the time, he wrote prolifically (30 volumes of literary work) and is particularly known for his poems on subjects such as social justice as well as for his love sonnets. I, however, was thinking about his food poems as I wandered through the maze of sunlit rooms. I couldn’t help but smile at the thought of the Nobel Prize winner writing “Ode to a Tomato” and “Ode to a Lemon” (“Creation’s original juices”).
About salt, he penned “Dust of the sea, in you / the tongue receives a kiss /
from ocean night / taste imparts to every seasoned / dish your ocean essence…In it, we taste infinitude.” No one has written more evocatively about wine than Pablo Neruda.: “Day colored wine / Night colored wine / wine with purple feet or wine with topaz blood.” He calls wine the “starry child of earth,” and says it can be “smooth / as a golden sword, soft / as lascivious velvet /…spiral shelled / and full of wonder.” He concludes his homage to wine: “You are choral, gregarious / At the least you must be shared.”
