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…)

They say there’s no such thing as a free lunch, but Irene and I managed to get one at Hetu’u restaurant on Easter Island.

As I mentioned in a few of my previous posts about our trip, we got to spend one more night on Easter Island than originally planned. As we were checking out of Chez Maria Goretti for our flight home that afternoon, we were told there wouldn’t be a flight that afternoon. We assumed it had something to do with the weather, which had been quite stormy the previous night, causing a cancellation of the Tapati festival, but once we arrived at the airport we learned that a passenger had experienced a heart attack on the lone inbound flight from Santiago, causing it to turn back.

As a result, LAN Airlines put us up at the Hotel Tupa at their expense, plus offered to pay for our lunch and dinner. Good on LAN. (Though we didn’t take them up on the dinner, as we spent the night at the festival.) What this all meant is that instead of being on a flight Friday afternoon, we were instead at Hetu’u restaurant, enjoying that free lunch.

Because our meal was paid for courtesy of a coupon handed us by the hotel, we didn’t get to choose from Hetu’u’s varied menu, some of which can be seen on the sandwich board out by the street, but were served a set menu, which ended up being a surprisingly good lunch anyway. (more…)

We initially avoided the Easter Island restaurant La Taverne du Pecheur because it seemed too … well … obvious.

It was in such a perfect spot—right by Caleta Hanga Roa, where the dive shops sent out their boats for scuba and snorkeling—that we figured they’d get a ton of walk-in traffic without a need to serve good food, and so would only have location on their side.

Besides, we preferred to find restaurants a little off the beaten track. (As if Easter Island wasn’t off the beaten track enough!) But then the Belgian family we befriended at Chez Maria Goretti told us we must go … so we went.

We sat on a second story patio outside beneath an umbrella (that may even be our table right above the restaurant’s sign), but soon the heavens opened, and the umbrella wasn’t enough to protect us. We moved to a table under an awning, but remained on the patio, so we could keep our view, which included moai who did not at all care that they were out in a storm. (more…)

So the next thing I decided to tackle with my Sansaire after those short ribs was an egg, which I was going to let bathe in 65-degree Centigrade water for 45 minutes.

Which sounded weird even to admit.

Why take so much time to prepare something that for my entire life up until now only took minutes? (Which I guess is a question only an obvious sous vide newbie would ask.) Because as promised by Sansaire, the result would be unlike any egg I’ve ever eaten.

Here’s my egg right after being scooped out of the warm water and cracked over wheat toast.

The white was delicate, and the yolk was creamy … buttery even.

This egg was no longer breakfast. It was … dessert.

I can assure you I’ll be having another one tomorrow.

Tataku Vave wasn’t the only Easter Island restaurant recommended by my Santiago food guide Karla Lodis. She also said we should head to Tia Berta, where we’d find awesome tuna empanadas. And since Karla had taken us to Rancho Doña Maria, we knew she knew a thing or two about empanadas. So we went for lunch Tuesday … and then returned Wednesday.

Which ought to tell you what we thought of those empanadas.

We went the first day in the company of our Easter Island guide Cristin Arvalo Pakarati, who once again, unprompted, validated Karla’s choice in restaurants. (more…)

Before we left Santiago, our food guide Karla Lodis recommended three restaurants I should try while on Easter Island. At the top of the list? Tataku Vave, which she said served the best ceviches and fresh fish.

Then, once on Easter Island, I asked our local guide Cristin Arvalo Pakarati which restaurant he thought served the best fish. His answer, without any prompting from me? Tataku Vave.

And so, Monday night, after our first day’s touring, Tataku Vave it was!

We timed our meal to end at the right time for us to amble over to that night’s installment of the Tapati festival, set to begin at 9:45, which meant that as we ate out on the patio we were once more treated to a terrific sunset. (more…)

Saturday, I told you all about my new Sansaire Immersion Circulator, and how that afternoon, I’d dropped three pounds of vacuum-sealed short ribs into a bath of 144-degree water. Last night, 72 hours later, we ate them.

So how’d they taste?

Amazing! (more…)

As I told you back when I started my account of our vacation with its ending, my plan was to bounce around in time and share completely out of order. So now, even though I already posted about Ranu Raraku, Orongo and other amazing sights (and sites) on Easter Island, it’s time to go back to our first night there.

We landed early Sunday afternoon at Mataveri International Airport, where we bought our five-day ticket to Rapa Nui National Park, gathered our luggage, and were met by a shuttle which took us to Chez Maria Goretti, our home away from home for the next five nights. We were too excited to take any time to settle in, and so quickly slathered ourselves with sunscreen and headed out in search of the Museo Antropológico P. Sebastián Englert, which is recommended as a way to begin one’s visit.

We (of course) headed the wrong way from our hotel, and wandered the streets of Hanga Roa, the island’s main town, from which we spotted our first moai off in the distance. We bumped into a young American named Laura, involved in a company (or perhaps a foundation) which hoped to promote local tea made out of nasturtiums, and she led us to the main street and gave us tips on shops and restaurants.

Irene and I had no plans for a sit-down meal that night, but figured we’d instead grab food from the vendors at that night’s Tapati festival … which we sadly never found.

Strangely, the schedule which had been handed out at the Santiago airport was out of date, and Sunday’s event (we’d learn the following day) was taking place at Hanga Piko rather than Hanga Vare-Vare, so we wouldn’t get out first taste of Tapati until Monday. But we did get to experience our first Easter Island sunset. (more…)

Our visit to Easter Island took place right in the middle of their summer, which runs from December to March. The weather was mostly warm and brilliantly sunny, and though there was rain at the end of our time there, we got a few rainbows out of it, which was nice. But more importantly, we were also there in the middle of the annual Tapati festival, which this year ran from February 1st through the 15th.

I wasn’t sure what to expect. I’ve attended exhibitions of local culture before, by Māori in New Zealand and by Aboriginal Australians, and while I felt lucky to have had those glimpses of culture, and though the performers may have been talented, they seemed in a “let’s do our best to entertain and educate the tourists” mode. So they seemed more rote and instructional than anything alive.

But the Tapati festival was very different. It’s something done by the locals for the locals, and the tourists who happen to be there are completely incidental to the process. The festival has been going on for nearly 50 years, since before tourism was really a thing, and would continue to do so whether we were there or not. We were just privileged witnesses, and not really the intended audience.

Each day we were there, there were morning, afternoon, and evening competitions on which teams and individuals would complete to earn points so that their chosen candidate would be crowned Queen of Tapati. Much like the Olympics, a panel of experts would judge each performance or presentation on a 10-point scale. (We never saw anyone earn anything lower than an 8.)

I did not at any time feel as if I was at a performance. It felt like a family gathering, with audience members calling out to their friends on stage, singing along to the familiar (to them) songs, and occasionally dancing the same routines as those competing, sometimes equally as precise as the competitors. It had the warmth of a high school play crossed with a small town football game, but with an even bigger heart. I was allowed to feel as if I was among friends, even though I was not. I felt amazingly connected. (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…)