Meat

After arriving in Chile in the early afternoon and crashing for a good six hour nap, we awoke at 9pm, right in time for our first dinner out in La Serena. Fortunately, in keeping with our late-night eating habits, people in Chile like their suppers late at night. When I’ve eaten out here on previous trips to the country, I found restaurants practically empty at 8pm; only old people and those with young children would bother going out that early for dinner!

It was very easy to find a place to have our first Chilean meal. Through some twist of fate, our hotel, the Gran Pacifico, is located right next to a meat restaurant - I don’t know how else to describe it. If anything could win David’s undying loyalty and love, it would probably be giant chunks of meat. This particular restaurant, Martin Fierro, was a Parrilladas, roughly translated, a BBQ. The meat is cooked on an open charcoal grill, located within sight of all the tables. Given the relative chill in the place, it is apparently the only heat source as well. This was no matter to us, the cold crisp air was a really wonderful change after the strangling heat and humidity of Florida.

The Gran Pacifico Hotel and Apartments

Our waiter and the menu arrived together - David immediately noted with delight that the menu had fur on the outside cover. The waiter spoke no English and we speak practically no Spanish, however we managed to easily order two waters (sin gas) and two pisco sours (I’ll write more about this later, it’s a very famous drink in Chile, particularly in the nearby Elqui valley where some of the best pisco is created). Then the waiter left us alone to puzzle out the menu.

With our pocket dictionary we managed to decipher a good amount of the side dishes, but the meat remained somewhat of a mystery. When the waiter returned, we pointed to diners at another table with a large pile of yummy looking meat on a miniature grill and asked “Que es eso” or “What is that”. He pointed to something on the menu, the house special, meant for two. We ordered that and one side, a bowl of potatoes with olive oil, mushrooms, and something else that we couldn’t translate.

A short time later a giant miniature grill brimming with meat arrived. GIANT. Perhaps 10 - 15 large pieces of steak, pork, sausage, and (as David puts it) other steak. We’re not totally sure what animals we ate, but it was all good. Gorgeous smelling potatoes also appeared and we discovered what the previously untranslated ingredient was, BACON, reinforcing our general perception that no dish in Chile comes without some form of animal on or in it.

This meal was not a meal for two; this was dinner for the Spanish, Euro Cup-winning futbol team. Even David’s best efforts barely put a dent in the pile-o-meat. We were fairly convinced that this was not exactly what the people next to us had ordered. They had apparently only ordered dinner for half the Spanish, Euro-Cup winning futbol team. We think we were probably slightly taken advantage of by our waiter, but really we couldn’t be mad. We have no food in the house and until we get some shopping done, the meat will last us as lunch and dinner tomorrow (and dinner for the cat, who had his food taken by customs). In the end, our first dinner out in Chile, with plenty of pisco sours to grease the wheels and dissolve the meat in our stomachs, cost roughly $70; a lot for a single dinner in Chile, but not a lot for dinner, lunch, and dinner again in Chile, and certainly not unreasonable for a celebration of our triumph over LAN airlines.

Tomorrow - a more mundane day, picking up our rental car and shopping for food and socks, since I forgot to bring more than one pair!