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Strangely, the schedule which had been handed out at the Santiago airport was out of date, and Sunday’s event (we’d learn the following day) was taking place at Hanga Piko rather than Hanga Vare-Vare, so we wouldn’t get out first taste of Tapati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…)

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…)

I never expected to find a great restaurant in Valparaiso. In fact, I never expected, during my few days in Chile before and after visiting Easter Island, to even find time to leave Santiago and visit Valparaiso. But then Karla Lodis, one of the guides I hired to help me navigate the Chilean food scene, suggested a day trip, and she managed to make it sound so tempting I thought, Valparaiso it is!

We took off early in the morning, stopping along the way for a breakfast of pork sandwiches and hardboiled eggs at Lo Vásquez market. Once in Valparaiso, we wandered the city’s hills, which were filled with colorful street art (a sample of which you can see above), toured Pablo Neruda’s home, rode in one of the famous funiculars, cruised the harbor, and more.

We packed a lot into our one day there, and I hope I’ll be forgiven for feeling that the highlight was lunch at Espiritu Santo. It’s not a restaurant I came across during the culinary research I did for our trip, but Carlos Reyes, one of our food guides, listed it as one of the 10 best restaurants in Chile in his book on the country’s 100 best restaurants.

And now that I’ve had a chance to eat there, I can only say … I agree! (more…)

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…)

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 …