My final meal in Santiago was one I’d been looking forward to for months, ever since Osaka made the list of Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants and I reached out for a reservation immediately. And as the time of our dinner approached, I grew even more excited, due to the additional wonderful things I’d been hearing about their food. Unfortunately, though the food at Osaka was indeed for the most part excellent, we ended up not feeling welcome there.

We arrived a few minutes before our 7:30 reservation and found that the door to the restaurant, inside the W Hotel, was closed. When it slid open exactly at 7:30, no one seemed ready to greet quests. The person who’d opened the door ignored us and walked off, and no one else even looked up. I had to interrupt the bartenders who were busy polishing glassware to get anyone to acknowledge or interact with us.

The servers seemed baffled we were even there, and questioned several times whether we actually had a reservation. I assured them that we did, but they didn’t believe me, and when one of them checked the computer screen at the maitre di’s station, he could not find we had one, even though I’d received a confirmation email way back in October. It was only because I remembered the name of the employee who’d emailed me that we were eventually allowed in to what was an empty restaurant, where none of the employees appeared eager to have us.

The food which followed was delicious, and the sushi was excellent, but the totally unexpected “who are you and why are you here” vibe instead of the warm, welcoming greeting we anticipated was a negative start to the meal. I’m aware that 7:30 is an early time for dining in Chile, but if Osaka hadn’t wanted us there at that time, they should never have accepted the reservation. So … a less than stellar experience.

After I returned home and contacted the restaurant, they apologized and explained that because our reservation had been taken in 2013, it failed for some reason to be transferred over in their system when the new year began, which is why no one expected us. While I can understand mistakes like that can happen, it sadly resulted in us feeling like intruders rather than customers.

Let’s hope you don’t have to go through anything like that, and can be free to focus solely on the food. (more…)

Back in 2012, when Irene and I were in Lima at the end of our Machu Picchu trip, we had one of the best meals of our lives at Astrid y Gaston, ranked as one of the 50 best restaurants in the world. While we didn’t expect that the Santiago branch of Astrid y Gaston would provide the same level of culinary excellence, we still thought it would be interesting to compare the two, and so we chose it for our final meal in Santiago before we headed off to Easter Island.

I’ve got to say though, that after our wonderful lunch earlier that day at Rancho Doña Maria, we could have easily skipped dinner or settled for a light snack. But we’d come so far, and had a reservation, and as they say, pass this way but once, so we pushed ourselves to hike around Santiago and the grounds of our hotel to make sure our appetites would recover in time for the meal we knew was waiting for us.

The offerings on the menu were, as was true for the Lima location, all extremely tempting. (more…)

I was surprised and happy to see that the pork ribs served at the unassuming Rancho Doña Maria appeared over at Eater on two bloggers’ lists of their favorite dishes from 2013.

Surprised because I would never have expected a traditional Chilean empanaderia to be listed amid the likes of such foodie destinations as Saison, Atera, and Boragó.

Happy because I knew I’d soon be in Santiago and would, I hoped, be able to tear into those pork ribs, too.

As I told you earlier, I contacted one of the bloggers who’d raved about Rancho Doña Maria, which eventually led me to Karla Lodis and Carlos Reyes, two Chilean foodies who (among other things) took us the restaurant in Chacobuco, about forty minutes outside Santiago.

If you weren’t deliberately hunting for Rancho Doña Maria, I doubt you’d find it. It’s in a small unsigned building by the side of the highway, and unless you knew what was waiting for you there, there’s no way you’d stop. (more…)

The two restaurants I most wanted to visit during our time in Chile couldn’t have been more different.

Rancho Doña Maria, by the side of the highway forty minutes outside of Santiago, serves empanadas baked in clay ovens and pork ribs to die for. Boragó, in the heart of Santiago, offers extravagant eight- and sixteen-course tasting menus, and could be considered South America’s Alinea.

Yet both represent the county’s cuisine at its finest.

Boragó currently comes in at #8 on a list of Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants, which therefore puts it at #1 for Chile. And after having eaten the restaurant’s most elaborate option, the Raqko tasting menu (the shorter tasting menu, still apparently mind-blowing, is called Endemica), we’d have to agree.

When we arrived for our 8:00 p.m. reservation, we were greeted by name and ushered into an empty restaurant … which again told us that if we want to dine at fashionable hours while in South America, we’re going to have to start making much later reservations! (If I remember correctly, the tasting menu at Astrid y Gaston in Lima wasn’t even available before 10:30 p.m.) The next patrons didn’t arrive for another half an hour, so for a brief period, Boragó was ours.

But a note of apology as I begin—my report on Boragó will be picture heavy and text light, because the explanations given by the (extremely friendly and knowledgable) servers for each dish were very complex, with the sourcing and harvesting of each ingredient being explained in depth, with far more detail than my memory could process. Luckily, the dishes themselves are so beautiful that the photos alone should still satisfy. (more…)

Ten days ago, I complained to TAM Airlines about the Hell we were put through boarding their flight out of Santiago due to gate agents who seemed clueless about Brazilian visa rules.

This afternoon, TAM had this to say:

Thank you for contacting the customer relations department at TAM Airlines. We appreciate the opportunity to reply to your concerns.

We regretted learning of the misunderstanding that took place when you and your wife Mrs. Irene Vartanoff, were returning from Santiago to Charlotte via Sao Paulo on February 9th. We can certainly understand your disappointment.

Please allow us to explain that our agents are expected to contact the pertinent supervisor, manager or security office when in doubt, to ensure our passengers do not experience any problems at their connecting points or destinations. Furthermore, to ensure the company is adhering to international travel regulations.

Nonetheless, we have reported matters to the pertinent department head, so that our staff is reminded that U.S. citizens can transit without a Visa when connecting in Sao Paulo (Guarulhos) or Rio de Janeiro (Galeao) Brazil, and to certify that our representatives are reminded of the importance of providing precise and accurate information to our clients.

Once again, thank you for contacting the customer relations department at TAM Airlines. We trust we can count on your understanding and future presence onboard our fights.

Cordially,

I’m glad we finally received a response, but the comment about what agents are supposed to do “when in doubt” raises the question—

Doubt? What doubt? How poorly trained are TAM employees that there would be any doubt? How is it that all three gate agents (maybe there were four, I no longer remember for sure) were unaware Brazilian law is clear that “there is no need for a visa if the traveler arrives in Brazil on a flight, remains in the international transit area, without passing through immigration control, and departs on another flight from the same airport.” That whole paragraph makes TAM’s answer seem more like an excuse than an explanation, because there was never a reason for doubt.

We’re surely not the first people this has happened to … and based on TAM’s unsatisfying answer, I seriously doubt we will be the last.

And I, unlike TAM, have reason for my doubt.

It occurs to me that when I complained about the way we were treated last Sunday by employees of TAM Airlines as we were boarding—or trying to board—a plane out of Santiago, I only offered my personal interpretation of the rules. But there’s to need to just take my word for it. Here’s what the Consulate General of Brazil in Washington has to say:

NOTE: There is no need for a visa if the traveler arrives in Brazil on a flight, remains in the international transit area, without passing through immigration control, and departs on another flight from the same airport.

Which is what I explained to TAM a week ago today when I emailed the customer service department about how their employees wouldn’t (until after much wailing and gnashing of teeth on our part) let us board a flight to Sao Paulo—where we would not enter Brazil but merely wait to board our continuing flight to Charlotte—for want of a visa.

A week later, here’s where we stand …

@scottedelman Hello, your case is under review. When finalized will contact you. Thank you.

— TAM Airlines (@TAMAirlines) February 18, 2014

It will be interesting to hear why the TAM gate agents had a different opinion of visa requirements than the Consulate General of Brazil.

Any bets on how long it’ll be before TAM’s investigation is finalized and we get an explanation?

When I booked the airfare for our recent vacation way back in September, I knew that we were going to play Easter Island dining by ear, but I intended to leave nothing to chance during our time in Santiago before and after. I made reservations at Boragó and Osaka the day a list of Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants was released, showing those restaurants as #8 and #48, and the only two restaurants from Chile to make the list. And I booked a dinner at Astrid y Gaston, because we’d had a wonderful meal at the Lima branch during our Machu Picchu trip, and I wanted to be able to compare.

I’d made no dinner plans for our first night in Santiago, though, because I assumed we might be destroyed by our overnight flights and want to do nothing more than snack on street food (if that) and crash. But then Raul Esteban Yañez Campos, a food critic I’d made contact with during the search for food guides I already told you about, recommended Picada Ana María as his favorite restaurant for traditional Chilean cuisine. So we decided we needed to push our way through whatever exhaustion we were going to feel&#8212because, after all, when were we likely to get to Santiago again?—and had Raul make us a reservation.

The food—what we got of it—was delicious, but we didn’t get to try all we would have liked, partially due to the restaurant being out of certain recommended dishes, but also thanks to our embarrassingly poor grasp of Spanish.

When I asked Raul what we absolutely must eat while there, the first thing he mentioned was something called Table of Warm Sea (which I assumed would include Ana Maria’s sea urchins which others have raved about), followed by the deer, wild hare, and quail. Sadly, the restaurant was out of those latter meats, and as for the Table of Warm Sea, no matter how many times I asked for it in English or Spanish, I couldn’t make myself understood by the server. (more…)

Before I tell you more about Easter Island, I’d like you to meet my new Chilean friends Karla Lodis and Carlos Reyes. That’s us below squinting into the morning sun at Santiago’s La Vega market.

I met Karla and Carlos due to my desire to eat at a hard-to-find restaurant on the outskirts of Santiago—Rancho Dona Maria in Chacobuco, about which more will be revealed later.

As you likely already know if you hang around here, I visit the foodie site Eater at least once each day. Coincidentally, two world-traveling bloggers there—John Sconzo and Bonjwing Lee—included Rancho Dona Maria’ pork ribs on their Top 10 lists for 2013 just a few weeks before Irene and I were due to head to Santiago on our way to Easter Island.

Well, you know that that meant. I had to get to Rancho Dona Maria! (more…)

We’re back home from our trip to Easter Island and Santiago, and I’ve got a ton to tell you about the amazing sites we saw, the great food we ate, the wonderful people we met, and more. But rather than start at the beginning, I want to share with you the strange way our trip ended.

None of the four flights that took us home from Easter Island went the way it was supposed to, and though the first flight went awry in our favor, the others—hoo-boy!—did not.

We were scheduled to return to Santiago from Easter Island on Friday … but didn’t. Our flight was cancelled because the inbound plane intended to carry us back to mainland Chile had to turn back two hours in after a passenger reportedly had a heart attack. Which meant that we got another day in paradise thanks to LAN Airlines, which paid for our hotel room Friday night, transported us there and back, and gave us vouchers to cover our lunch and dinner.

Here’s the view we had into a caldera from the patio outside our hotel room.

We were thrilled. Stranded on Easter Island for another day? Bring it on!

Unfortunately, our luck did not hold when it later came time to leave Santiago … (more…)

I head off for Santiago this afternoon on the way to Easter Island, and on the recommendation of Chilean food critic Raul Yañez Campos, I’ll be having dinner Thursday at Picada Ana Maria. I trust his taste, so without doing much research, I took him up on his offer to speak to the owners and get us a reservation.

But this, according to the Ulterior Epicure blog, is what we’re in for:

Ana Maria has become an institution of traditional Chilean cuisine, one that focuses heavily on fresh seafood and roasted game. I went twice, once with Guzman, and once with Foods From Chile.

They don’t do small at Ana Maria. When you order quail, three whole birds arrive in a brothy stew of vegetables. When you order wild boar, you get three, large, fists of meat in a sticky, ginger glaze (one of my favorite dishes here). Giant Patagonian pine nuts arrived in a bowl. Spliced lengthwise, each pine nut was at least an inch in length. The texture of cooked chestnuts, they were simply sautéed with some herbs.

And, when you ask for sea urchin, they bring you a whole plate of them: fat, creamy, sweet.

Locals disagree on how to eat their sea urchins on toast – whether to dress them, or eat them plain, with little more than salt and lime. At Ana Maria, the owner’s son, who ate with Guzman and me, prefers sea urchin on toast with a smear of butter, some salsa verde, lime, salt, and a spot of extra virgin olive oil. I tasted both versions, and I prefer them dressed the way the owner’s son likes them.

For dessert, we were served a smattering of Chilean fruits, including a cup of diced quince, which I especially loved for its tartness.

And here are some pics.

Sounds like I’d better do plenty of walking tomorrow in Santiago to earn that dinner …