Serving Up Santiago

Smiles come free of charge at Santiago’s Fuente Alemana eateries. Would you like a towering pork sandwich with that?

In order to understand Chilean food, you must start at the beginning. Pedro de Valdivia, the charming but impractical Spanish explorer who founded the city of Santiago on February 12, 1541, enthusiastically wrote to his king, “This land is such that life here cannot be equaled… It is abundant in grass, and can support any kind of cattle or livestock and plants that you can imagine… so that it seems as if God had created everything so that it would be at hand.”

In other words, the country has always had an ungodly abundance of things to eat, which might explain why it’s never been known for its cuisine. Yes, really. Take a country like Mexico, where for hundreds of years the indigenous people did what they could with a little corn, a scrap of stringy chicken and maybe a few hot peppers, ingeniously turning a couple of pig ears into some fabulous silk purses, culinarily speaking. Mole poblano is the stepchild of hardship and chiles en nogada the bastard child of scarcity.

Left to right, clockwise: 1 The city’s foodies and top chefs alike swear by the fast food at Dominó. 2 Try the diet-busting chorrillana at Galindo, a popular lunch spot in Bellavista.

And what of Chile? Well, its capital – home to 5 million people, or one-third of the country’s population – anchors the northern portion of the fertile Central Valley. Wedged between the towering Andes and the lower coastal mountains, the region churns out more wine, fruit and vegetables than any other in this long and narrow land. As I explore Santiago’s Mercado Central with Liz Caskey, who recently hosted the Chilean episode of the PBS series Diary of a Foodie and is writing a cookbook on Chilean cuisine and wine, I see what Valdivia meant.

Not far from where he founded the city, the bustling market is housed in an 1872 wrought iron landmark. Fishmongers belt out the names of their daily catches, while hungry shoppers flock to the picadas, informal food stands with two to three tables or a half-dozen stools lining a counter, for a bowl of fish soup or steamed razor clams. Elbowing our way past jam-packed stalls, we come across a plethora of avocados I’ve never heard of before, like the buttery Reed and creamy Pinkerton. The intensely flavourful Laroda plums (from the port city of Valparaíso, an hour and a half to the west) and the just-picked green Sugraone grapes, black Lapins cherries and white peaches (all from fields even closer) are so sweet, it’s a crime to do anything but eat them out of hand. 

Tomás Olivera puts the final touches on his congrio a la plancha.

So imagine my surprise when I discover that mayonnaise, of all things, is a major food group. At Fuente Alemana, one of Santiago’s most popular sandwich chains, my lomito almost keels over with shredded pork and mashed avocado. The sandwich, which Caskey refers to as the unofficial national dish, is topped with an ice cream scoop of mayonnaise. “We’ve got our grains and breads, fruits and vegetables, meats and dairy – and mayonnaise,” she admits. The mayo-as-part-of-the-food-pyramid effect is in full force at the Dominó eateries, where they drown their completos (hot dogs) in chopped tomato, mashed avocado and enough mayo to make you wonder whether there really is a wiener beneath the towering mound of house-made condiment. Maybe that’s why, on previous visits, I’d dismissed Chilean food as little more than street nosh.

NEXT: CHILE’S NEW CROP OF CHEFS