We love to eat. Unfortunately, we are very hungry people about 6pm each night. The Chilean 9pm dinnertime is mostly true - our internal dinner clocks took a week to adjust!
Dining in Santiago
Plaza San Francisco provided two excellent dinners, first on the night of our arrival, which was a life-saver because the place we had made 8:30pm reservations wasn't even open at 8:15 when we walked by. Baked crab appetizer; Paila Marina - more like Boulabaise than Spanish Paella - all local fish, no rice. Rabbit rolled & stuffed. Excellent Chileans wines. Our kind of meal...
Parrilladas is a place that serves grilled meats, beef, chicken, pork and a couple of unidentifiable meats piled on it's own tabletop charcoal burner. Side of papa frites and, of course, Chilean beer. Very casual and we were one of 3 tables at 8pm one night in Bellavista.
In Central Mercado, Donde Augusto is Placido Domingo's place and he must be a fun guy with good taste. The place was bustling at lunch with business people and tourists alike. We had soup consume, calamari pils-pils and albacore (which is swordfish, not tuna).
In Valle Nevado:
Lunch on mountain included a nice salad bar with steamed, chilled and marinated broccoli, cauliflower, green beans, asparagus, olives, cocktail onions, tomatos, hard boiled eggs and mild green chiles stuffed with tunafish.
The Chilean dinner buffet had a wide variety of meat, fish, salads, soups and desserts. A bit adventurous, but when in Rome... We ate there twice.
Don Giovanni's (Italian) buffet with a choice of spaghetti, lasagna or Corvino (sea bass), plus dessert. Busy place, lots of families.
La Fourchette d'Or (French) excellent pork loin, bruschetta and almond soup with bits of cauliflower and chicken. Dessert was apple tart, fruit and ricotta cheese. Quiet and cozier than the other places.
You must make reservations for dinner each day. If you call too late, only 9pm reservations will be available. We learned to reserve a day in advance to get the 7:30 and 8pm seatings. Reservationists only speak Spanish, so it took some practice to learn to do this over the phone. Only one place didn't have our name on the list, but let us in anyway.
In Viña del Mar:
At Hotel O'Higgins we had a pleasant lunch of corvino with a black sauce, that I assume was squid ink sauce, however I never learned the word for squid. Nice atmosphere with a piano player at lunchtime.
Delices del Mar is a nice seafood place where we were able to eat around 8pm. There was an Italian place where the sauces were French, but the huge quantity of food was Italian.
On the ocean boardwark, Chef Girad served a wonderful lunch - a little champagne apertif, tomato soup, pork entree and desserts followed by expresso. Again, nice atmosphere, view of the ocean boardwalk and a piano player.
Cap Ducal dinner was very good and you couldn't beat the view. Even after it got dark, the crashing ocean waves made sure you knew where you were.
In Papudo:
In Papudo, we had lunch at the Gran Azul on the beach. Service was terrible, food was very good and the company included pelicans right outside the window. Look carefully behind Frank out the window - the pelicans sit there waiting for the scraps from the kitchen.
Chilean Culture
In general, we found that Chileans are friendly, relaxed and have a great sense of humor. People everywhere smiled, teased and were very helpful. English is not generally spoken, however everyone was very patient with our few Spanish words and phrases and were more amused than annoyed. Street performers drew large crowds and people laughed out loud.
The people at the eyeglass shop, happy to fix Frank's glasses while we waited, but only after teasing us good-naturedly (in Spanish) and trying to carry on a conversation that none of us understood.
The arts - the Chileans like poetry, art, opera, theater, etc. Several poets are honored by murals and sculptures. There were a wide variety of painting styles, local artists works hung in every restaurant in Santiago and Valle Nevado - lovely work, both realistic and abstract.
At Cap Ducal, there were no room keys. At Hotel O'Higgins, they took the key at the front desk and kept your car keys if you wanted them to. Again, while in Rome, we didn't worry about it.
There's a German influence here - Strudel is a common dessert (and it's good strudel!) and we saw an occasional German word or phrase on signs and other places.
