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    The food in Chile gives me new appreciation for bread and butter. I mean this in both of the ways you might take it: most of the food is terrible, but the bread and butter are actually quite delicious. As far as I have been able to trace it, the problem is that no one in this country knows how to cook. There is plenty of fresh food streaming in from the Chilean and Argentine countryside. I have tasted it and I know it’s good. But once it goes through your average Chilean kitchen, it comes out way too over-cooked and under-spiced. The Chileans claim to like it this way; the more travelled tell stories of not being able to eat foreign food because they found it painfully spicy. I can understand that not as many people like Tabasco, chili powder and garlic much as I do, but what’s wrong with little a little basil, paprika, or vinegar every once and a while? And why do you have to boil everything until it’s of a uniform taste and texture? Isn’t it interesting to tell the difference between the ingredients in you food while it’s in your mouth? Okay, enough beating up on the Chileans for not sharing my gastronomical preferences, let’s move on to their national dishes, the empanada and the completo. The completo is basically a hot dog with some kind of guacamole slathered all over it. Someone, Matt I think, warned me not to eat one of these expecting anything remotely similar to the dogs of my youth. One look made his warning unnecessary. I haven’t eaten one of these yet, and I don’t plan to. An empanada is basically a glorified hot pocket that you can get in any flavor imaginable. To be fair, I eat an average of one of these every day, now that I found a good place to get them. And they are the ultimate convenience food. You can eat them with one hand and without paying attention, which is good for someone who pays as little attention to what he is doing as I do.

    That about wraps it up for the overview and examples of Chilean food. Now as promised, here’s a breakdown of the best and worst meals I’ve had here.

Best Meals

1. Ceviche, Baked Salmon, Stew, and Cornbread, with Pisco Sour and Wine.

   Eaten at the party of some University of Santiago professors
   It’s the ceviche and beverages that I really remember. In contrast to the Mexican style of finely dicing the fish, of which I can heard about two plates with corn chips, this ceviche was chopped in bite sized chunks, was barely cooked and was seasoned with just a little vinegar and some bell peppers. It was closer to sushi than what I would have called ceviche, but amazing flavorful. The pisco sour, made of pisco, a very popular Chilean grape brandy was equally good, and the wine is some of the best I have ever had. I hope to write a whole post aobut Chilean wine, but first I’ll have to drink some more of it.

2. Carne a la Pobre

   Eaten at Kathy’s Cocina, Entre Lagos
   We didn’t know what “Carne a la Pobre” meant, but it sounded better than the single alternative, so we went with it. It turns out to mean a steak with friend onions and eggs over easy on top, with fries on the side. Unfortunately, the meal cost about $31 for three people. After that meal, Colin and I promised ourselves that we would always ask the waiter “How much does that cost?” and “Is it possible to get that ‘a la pobre?’” before ordering.

3. Eggs over Easy, Sausage, Bread with Apricot Jam, and Tea

   Eaten in our cabaña, Entre Lagos
   This was really good. We bought all the ingredients from a small store thirty paces away from the cabaña we rented and cooked it ourselves. The sausage and eggs tasted like they had been inside an animal that morning. This was the meal that convinced me that the quality of Chilean food really was due to bad cooking. If the food tasted this good with minimal cooking, it had to be between the store and the plate that things were going wrong. Coincidentally, I just discovered a book called Practical Chilean Cooking in the apartment, so I am curious to see what it says.

Worst Meals

1. ?????, ??????, ??????, and Bananas in Some Kind of Pudding

   Eaten at UChile student cafeteria
   Not quite as bad as it seems. I could tell what the food was at the time, but all I can remember now is the desert and how bad all of it was. Actually, I think the entreé was a really tough dry steak. The rest is a blur, but this cafeteria is really terrible. I was happy to find the empanadería, where I can get hot, fresh, and identifiable food just a few steps away.

2. About a twenty-way tie among most of the restaurant meals I have eaten here and whatever dish we concocted when we were too tired to go shopping so we just threw everything we had together in a frying pan. Note that this is not nearly as bad as the winner in the worst meals category.