When everyone tells you the food is shit

And they're wrong. (Bite into this, Santiago edition).

This newsletter took a temporary hiatus because I planned a post on brioche making and wrote it so exceptionally drunk that it shall forever wither in the drafts folder. But we’re back, this time from Santiago, Chile, alongside friend of the newsletter Lizzy.

I’m writing this from our 22nd story balcony in Providencia, Santiago, the land of incredible views and better-than-expected vibes.

the view from our balcony

When Lizzy and I told our friends we’d be traveling to Santiago on our last-minute, two-week January severance “vacation,” a surprising number of them had a less than excited reaction. We happen to know a lot of people who studied abroad or lived here, and they seemed scared to admit they hadn’t had a great time. Upon further probing, most said that we should expect the food to be subpar.

“Chileans don’t like spice.” "It’s all bland.” “The food is shit.”

Obviously I am quite annoying when it comes to food, and I refused to believe this. Santiago is one of the most populated cities in South America. There’s no way that huge groups of people in a vibrant, diverse place don’t crave and even venerate food. It’s the human experience that unites us, regardless of language.

So, before we left, I did the research I always do before travel. I read everything I could from people who blog about food. I set up elaborate filters on Google maps. I found reviews raving about the best ceviche in South America, about Japanese-Peruvian fusion sushi, about indigenous Mapuche cuisine. And I promised Lizzy that the food would be great. That I was psyched.

I was actually quite nervous. I don’t speak any Spanish. I don’t know anything about South American cuisines, aside from a Peruvian restaurant in Providence, Rhode Island that blew my mind in college. What if I’d committed to traveling to South America for the first time in my life, just to be disappointed by the food? Food is such a defining part of why I travel.

I would just like to say definitively that everybody was wrong. And if you’re lucky enough to be able to travel or live somewhere new and you’re eating shit food, you’re probably not trying hard enough. (Unless you’re a vegetarian, which would just suck here.)

We’ve been in Santiago for four days and already have had too many good meals to write about, but I’m sitting here now because we haven’t been able to stop thinking about the Mapuche lunch that consumed us yesterday. I found Newen Lamngen in an offhand mention on the second page of Google search results. I had no idea what we’d be eating (there was no website or online menu), but the reviews promised Chilean food with histories that stretched before Spanish colonization.

Since I don’t speak any Spanish, Lizzy’s been stuck with the torturous responsibility of communicating for us both in her functional but rusty vocabulary. In return, I’m responsible for choosing what we eat. We’re an odd yet totally productive combination of enthusiastic but useless (me) and useful but confused (Lizzy).

And so when we arrived, we couldn’t have been in a theoretically worse position. We had wandered through a massive hall of food stalls and nearly gave up on finding the place. When we finally did sit down, there were were no physical menus, only a verbal one recounted in rapid-fire Spanish with vocabulary far too specific for Lizzy.

She was flustered, and I was just dumb, but it was one of those perfect moments. The woman who owned the restaurant clearly couldn’t be happier to deal with us. Something about our eager enthusiasm for whatever was best clicked with her, and we trusted her completely to give us what she wanted.

mysterious hot sauce, pulmay, chupe cochayuyo (squid/clams in cheese). we think we've found the right names for these dishes after some serious research, but no promises

We had no idea what to expect, or what it would cost, but of course it was the best meal we’ve had so far (and the cheapest). The dishes we ate were massive and exceptionally rich, loaded with spice and overflowing with the kind of seafood you can really only dream about. A mysterious bubbling pot of cheese was packed with what we eventually decided were small pieces of squid. A pot of mussels, pork, chicken, sausage, and clams sat in a glowing broth that warmed and burned. The hot sauce looked like pico but tasted like spicy fruit.

The sheer quantity of food was so overwhelming that for the first time, we both bemoaned the absence of men (aka human garbage disposals) on the trip. But instead, we carried leaking containers of leftovers all over Santiago for the rest of the day just so we could finish our evening on this balcony with the meal all over again, nearly as satisfying the second time.

the leftovers, enough to feed us both a second time.

There’s so much more to say about how much we’re loving embracing our idiocy and trusting strangers, but instead I’ll just end it here. Eventually this newsletter really will include recurring DC restaurant thoughts at the end, but I’m enjoying Santiago far too much to be thinking about home at the moment.

I can’t believe I’m getting to sit here and write this to my friends and to people who actually want to hear about the food, it’s a bit surreal. Thanks to all of you who’ve subscribed and read so far.