SO LONG AND THANKS FOR ALL THE EMPANADAS : The Food Experience in Chile

Chileans, like all other civilizations, love their food. While a lot of Chilean food is also Latin American food, they do, kinda, have food which they call their own. (barely though)

My Experiments With Food

As a budget traveler, food trucks attracted my attention on account of their cheap(er) prices and the ready-to-go foods I could eat and continue walking around the town, exploring.

EMPANADAS. Empanadas are everywhere in Chile. From the streets stalls to food trucks to grocery shops to supermarkets to fast food restaurants and to fancy fine diners. I was quite taken by the empanadas to a point where I was eating varieties of empanadas for all my meals. Thankfully the fervour died soon, particularly after a really bad empanada I had in the outskirts of Santiago. That one bad empanada forced me to explore other food and snacking options.

Churrascos and hamburgers and, in some cases, sandwiches were the most usual suspects in their neon-lit menus. And a Chilean variation from the hotdog family called completo. Usually the cheapest of all menu items, a completo is a hotdog with copious amounts of mustard, mayo and palta on top. While I never defected to Team-Completos because they are incredibly hard and messy to eat, and the XXL sauces on top make it an unhealthy(-ier) option, but they make up for great evening snacks, filling up the lunch-dinner interstice (The Chileans have a word for it - Once)

All of these food-truck dishes came with more-than a dash of papa fritas - gigantic portions of potato fries which I could never finish up. Even with my higher-than-average caloric requirements from all the walking around, so big was the portion of fries along with hamburgers and churrascos, the memory of giving up and letting go of the rest of fries is vivid.

For the bigger meals - lunches and dinners - my usual act was to start walking about in the town and see if I stumbled upon anything that was novel, interesting, healthy (or not too unhealthy) while also being light on the pocket.

I tried to get mains which had a portion of salad, some form of meat and bread or rice to go along with. Grilled chicken, carne and several varieties of pacific fish - Salmon, Reineta, Hake are some that I ended up trying, and even repeating later.

They sometimes also have local meat varieties - Guanaco (an animal from the camel family, found in South Patagonia), octopuses from the southern Pacific coasts. There is so much more, but I being a recluse foodie couldn't try more. (sigh)

Spirited Away

Almost every region has their own famous breweries, apart from the uncountable artisanal ones peppered throughout cities and towns. There was no shortage of choice, and options were aplenty, no matter what part of Chile I was in.

Pisco, a spirit made from fermentation of grapes, particularly the ones grown in the vineyards of the Elqui Valley in the north, was a highlight. Several Pisco distilleries dot the map of this area, and they offer tours of their distilleries, taking you through the production process. I do not remember paying a lot of attention was only interested in the free samples they promised to make me taste after. Pisco is used as a base liquor for a few prominent cocktails in Chile - the Pisco Sour and the Piscola. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Probably the most globally famous of Chilean spirits is their wine. Mostly made in the valleys around the Elqui Valley, I found the supermarket shelves flooded with these local wines. A sommelier's paradise!

Also, an honourable mention to the cocktail called Terremoto (literally meaning Earthquake), which rocked my world (ba dum tss!).

It was a cocktail, with a spirit that I don't remember, mixed with a red-colored, fruity flavoured syrup and topped with 2 scoops of ice-cream. I rate it 9.5/10! (pun intended)