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…)

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…)

This device may (or may not) change the way I cook. I’ll know more soon. Well … in about 55 hours.

The dishes I’ve eaten at restaurants over the years which were prepared via the sous vide method have been among the most mind-blowing. (more…)